insight 
by tasha eurich 



Copyright © 2017 by Tasha Eurich
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Business, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a
division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
crownpublishing.com
CROWN BUSINESS is a trademark and CROWN and the Rising Sun colophon are registered
trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 9780451496812
Ebook ISBN 9780451496829
Cover design: Christopher Brand
Cover illustration: Francesco Ciccolella
v4.1
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
1. The Meta-Skill of the Twenty-First Century
PART ONE: ROADBLOCKS AND BUILDING BLOCKS
2. The Anatomy of Self-Awareness:
The Seven Pillars of Insight
3. Blindspots:
The Invisible Inner Roadblocks to Insight
4. The Cult of Self:
The Sinister Societal Roadblock to Insight
PART TWO: INTERNAL SELF-AWARENESS—MYTHS
AND TRUTHS
5. Thinking Isn’t Knowing:
The Four Follies of Introspection
6. Internal Self-Awareness Tools That Really Work
PART THREE: EXTERNAL SELF-AWARENESS—
MYTHS AND TRUTHS
7. The Truth We Rarely Hear:
From Mirror to Prism
8. Receiving, Reflecting on, and Responding to Difficult or Surprising
Feedback
PART FOUR: THE BIGGER PICTURE
9. How Leaders Build Self-Aware Teams and Organizations
10. Surviving and Thriving in a Delusional World
Appendices
Acknowledgments
Notes
To Mama, Noni, and my beloved S.P.
It is most perilous to be a speaker of Truth. Sometimes one must
choose to be silent, or be silenced. But if a truth cannot be spoken, it
must at least be known. Even if you dare not speak truth to others,
never lie to yourself.
—FRANCES HARDINGE
The men burst in with urgent news to report. A party of 35 enemy scouts had
been spotted roughly seven miles away, camped out in a rocky ravine. What
would the young lieutenant colonel decide to do?
The pressure was on, and he knew it. After all, this was a time of war, and he
alone was responsible for the 159 recruits he’d led into the field. Despite the fact
that the colonel was a 22-year-old rookie with zero combat experience, he’d
somehow found himself second in command of an entire army. Not only did he
have to act quickly and decisively, he needed to prove himself to everyone who
was watching. This would be a crucial test of his military prowess, but he had no
doubt he would ace it. The supremely self-assured young man was just itching to
show his superiors what he was made of.
Those men in the ravine? They were clearly planning to attack, he confidently
(and, as it turned out, inaccurately) concluded. So the colonel ordered a sneak
assault. In the early hours of May 28, his troops descended on the unsuspecting
party, who didn’t stand a chance. In less than 15 minutes, 13 enemy soldiers were
dead and 21 were captured.
Brimming with pride over his victory, the colonel returned to camp and began
firing off letters. The first was to his commander. But before even recounting
news of the battle, the emboldened leader took the opportunity—in the form of
an eight-paragraph diatribe—to grouse about his pay. His next letter was to his
younger brother, to whom he nonchalantly bragged about his fearlessness in the
face of enemy attack: “I can with truth assure you,” he wrote, “I heard the bullets
whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.”
His self-congratulatory correspondences completed, it was time to plan his next
move. Convinced that the enemy was about to launch a revenge attack, he
realized he would need to find a better location for their camp. After crossing a
nearby mountain range, the colonel and his men found themselves in a large, lowlying alpine meadow. The grassland was surrounded on all sides by rolling hills
dotted with bushes and a dense pine forest. Surveying the area, the colonel
declared it the perfect defensive location and ordered his troops to begin
preparations.
A few days later, he looked on proudly as his men put the finishing touches on
their circular stockade, which consisted of scores of upright seven-foot logs
draped with animal skins. And because it could hold only 70 men at once, he’d
ordered them to dig a three-foot trench for everyone else to crouch in. The
colonel thought it was marvelous, assuring his commander that “we have with
nature’s assistance made a good entrenchment and by clearing the bushes out of
these meadows prepared a charming field for an encounter.” He knew they’d be
outmanned, but “even with my small numbers,” he reported, “I shall not fear the
attack of 500 men.”
Unfortunately, not everyone agreed with the confident young leader. One of
his many questionable decisions was the placement of the fort. Because it was
built on such soft ground, a light shower of rain would turn the meadow into a
swamp, and a downpour would flood the trenches and drench their ammunition.
What’s more, they were so close to the woods—just 60 yards away—that enemy
marksmen could sneak up undetected and effortlessly fire on their fortress at
close range. As for the fort itself, the colonel’s allied commander—a seasoned
battle veteran—insisted that “that little thing upon the meadow” simply would not
hold.
Undeterred and convinced that he knew best, the colonel dismissed these
arguments out of hand, furiously proclaiming the commander and his army to be
“treacherous devils” and “spies.” A minor rebellion followed, with the allied
commander and his followers fleeing in fear (incidentally, this fear turned out to
be extremely well-founded). In the battle that was to come, the colonel wouldn’t
find the bullets whistling past him to be quite as charming.
And that battle would be momentous. So momentous that the colonel’s
mistakes would change the course of history. In the years since, historians have
attempted to explain how the operation went so tragically wrong. Many have
appropriately criticized the colonel for “advancing when he should have retreated;
for fighting without awaiting sufficient reinforcements; for picking an
indefensible spot; for the slapdash construction of the fort; for alienating his…
allies; and for shocking hubris in thinking that he could defeat the imposing
[enemy] force.”
But the colonel’s downfall can’t be attributed simply to tactical errors, flawed
maneuvers, or the lost trust of his men. Examining them alone overlooks their
root cause: at the most basic level, the colonel lacked the single most important,
and yet least examined, determinant of success or failure—whether on the
battlefield, in the workplace, or anywhere else. That quality is self-awareness.
While a precise definition is more complex than it first seems, self-awareness
is, at its core, the ability to see ourselves clearly—to understand who we are,
how others see us, and how we fit into the world around us.
*1 And since
Plato instructed us to “know thyself,” philosophers and scientists alike have
extolled the virtues of self-awareness. Indeed, this ability is arguably one of the
most remarkable aspects of being human. In his book The Telltale Brain,
neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran poetically explains:
Any ape can reach for a banana, but only humans can reach for the
stars. Apes live, contend, breed and die in forests—end of story.
Humans write, investigate, and quest. We splice genes, split atoms,
launch rockets. We peer upward…and delve deeply into the digits of
pi. Perhaps most remarkably of all, we gaze inward, piecing together
the puzzle of our own unique and marvelous brain…This, truly, is
the greatest mystery of all.
Some have even argued that the ability to understand ourselves is at the core of
human survival and advancement. For millions of years, the ancestors of Homo
sapiens evolved almost painfully slowly. But, as Ramachandran explains, about
150,000 years ago, there was a rather explosive development in the human brain
—where, among other things, we gained the ability to examine our own thoughts,
feelings, and behaviors, as well as to see things from others’ points of view (as we
will learn, both of these processes are absolutely critical for self-awareness). Not
only did this create the foundation for higher forms of human expression—like
art, spiritual practices, and language—it came with a survival advantage for our
ancestors, who had to work together to stay alive. Being able to evaluate their
behaviors and decisions and read their impact on other members of the tribe
helped them, to use a slightly more modern reference, not get voted off the
island.
Flash forward to the twenty-first century. Though we may not face the same
day-to-day threats to our existence as our ancestors did, self-awareness is no less
necessary to our survival and success—at work, in our relationships, and in life.
There is strong scientific evidence that people who know themselves and how
others see them are happier. They make smarter decisions. They have better
personal and professional relationships. They raise more mature children. They’re
smarter, superior students who choose better careers. They’re more creative,
more confident, and better communicators. They’re less aggressive and less likely
to lie, cheat, and steal. They’re better performers at work who get more
promotions. They’re more effective leaders with more enthusiastic employees.
They even lead more profitable companies.
On the flip side, a lack of self-awareness can be risky at best and disastrous at
worst. In business, regardless of what we do or what stage we’re at in our careers,
our success depends on understanding who we are and how we come across to our
bosses, clients, customers, employees, and peers. This becomes even more
important the higher you ascend on the corporate ladder: senior executives who
lack self-awareness are 600 percent more likely to derail (which can cost
companies a staggering $50 million per executive). And more generally, un-selfaware professionals don’t just feel less fulfilled in their careers—when they get
stuck, they tend to have trouble figuring out what their next phase should even be.
The list goes on and on. After so many years of researching the subject, I
would go so far as to say that self-awareness is the meta-skill of the twentyfirst century. As you’ll read in the pages ahead, the qualities most critical for
success in today’s world—things like emotional intelligence, empathy, influence,
persuasion, communication, and collaboration—all stem from self-awareness. To
put it another way, if we’re not self-aware, it’s almost impossible to master the
skills that make us stronger team players, superior leaders, and better relationship
builders—at work and beyond.
Now, you’d certainly be hard pressed to find many people who don’t
instinctively know that self-awareness is important. After all, it’s a term we tend
to toss around pretty freely—about our boss, our colleagues, our in-laws, our
politicians—although have you noticed that when we do, it’s usually in the
negative, as in “so-and-so just isn’t self-aware”? But despite the critical role it
plays in our success and happiness, self-awareness is a remarkably rare quality.
For most people, it’s easier to choose self-delusion—the antithesis of self-
awareness—over the cold, hard truth. This is particularly true when our delusion
masquerades, as it often does, as insight. The colonel is one example. Let’s look at
a more modern manifestation. I recently picked up Travis Bradberry’s best-selling
book Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and I was astonished to learn that over the last
decade, our collective emotional intelligence (EQ) has improved. (EQ is defined
as the ability to detect, understand, and manage emotions in ourselves and others,
and countless studies have shown that people who have it are more successful,
more resilient in the face of obstacles, more tolerant of stress, better at building
relationships, and more.) But in my work as an organizational psychologist,
Bradberry’s findings didn’t match what I had observed: at least anecdotally, I’ve
seen low EQ becoming more, not less, of a problem in recent years.
It wasn’t until I took the online assessment that came with the book that I
identified the stunning source of the discrepancy. While, yes, Bradberry’s
research involved a staggering 500,000 people, his conclusions were based on
their own self-assessments. Think about that for a minute. Picture a few of the
least emotionally intelligent people you know. If you asked them to evaluate their
own EQ, how much would you bet that they’d see themselves as at least above
average? So an alternative, and far more likely, explanation for Bradbury’s
findings is a growing gap between how we see ourselves and what we really are.
In other words, what looked like an increase in EQ was more likely a decrease in
self-awareness.
*2
Our increasingly “me”-focused society makes it even easier to fall into this
trap. Recent generations have grown up in a world obsessed with self-esteem,
constantly being reminded of their wonderful and special qualities. It’s far more
tempting to see ourselves through rose-colored glasses than to objectively
examine who we are and how we’re seen. And this isn’t just a generational
problem, or even just an American one—it afflicts people of all ages, genders,
backgrounds, cultures, and creeds.
Right now, you might be mentally conjuring all the delusional people you know
and chuckling—the co-worker who thinks he’s a brilliant presenter but puts
everyone to sleep in meetings; the boss who brags about being approachable but
terrifies her team; the friend who thinks she’s a “people person” but is always the
most awkward guest at the party. Yet there’s something else we all need to
consider. As the Bible asks, “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the
speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?”
(Matthew 7:4). Whether it’s at work, at home, at school, or at play, we’re quick
to accuse others of being unaware, but we rarely (if ever) ask ourselves
whether we have the same problem. Case in point: in a survey that I conducted
among potential readers of this very book, a full 95 percent reported that they
were either somewhat or very self-aware!
The truth is that while most of us think we know ourselves pretty well, this
confidence is often unfounded. Researchers have established that our selfassessments “are often flawed in substantive and systematic ways.” As you’ll read
more about soon, studies show that we tend to be terrible judges of our own
performance and abilities—from our leadership skills to our car-driving prowess
to our performance at school and at work. The scariest part? The least competent
people are usually the most confident in their abilities.
And in most cases, the planks in our eyes are pretty obvious to everyone but us.
A tone-deaf college student who drops out of school to become a singer. A
braggadocious boss who reads scores of business books but remains a terrible
leader. A parent who spends very little time with his kids but thinks he’s “Dad of
the Year.” A thrice-divorced woman who’s convinced that the end of each
marriage was her ex’s fault. Or a colonel who thinks he’s a military genius but is
really about to get in way over his head.
But being overconfident about our abilities isn’t the only way that low selfawareness can play out. Sometimes we lack clarity about our values and goals,
causing us to perpetually make choices that aren’t in our best interests. Other
times, we fail to grasp the impact we’re having on the people around us, alienating
our colleagues, friends, and families without even knowing it.
Now, if that’s what unawareness looks like, the next logical question becomes:
What does it mean to be self-aware? When I began my three-year research
program on the subject, answering this question seemed like a rather
straightforward place to start. Yet I was stunned to learn just how many
conflicting definitions existed. Without a clear definition of self-awareness,
though, how could I possibly develop an empirical method to help people
improve it? So my research team and I spent months reviewing more than 750
studies to see what patterns emerged. And in the process, we unearthed two main
categories of self-awareness that, strangely, weren’t always related.
Internal self-awareness has to do with seeing yourself clearly. It’s an inward
understanding of your values, passions, aspirations, ideal environment,
patterns, reactions, and impact on others. People who are high in internal selfawareness tend to make choices that are consistent with who they really are,
allowing them to lead happier and more satisfying lives. Those without it act in
ways that are incompatible with their true success and happiness, like staying in
an unfulfilling job or relationship because they don’t know what they want.
External self-awareness is about understanding yourself from the outside in—
that is, knowing how other people see you. Because externally self-aware
people can accurately see themselves from others’ perspectives, they are able to
build stronger and more trusting relationships. Those low in external selfawareness, on the other hand, are so disconnected with how they come across that
they’re often blindsided by feedback from others (that is, if others are brave
enough to tell them). And very often, by the time they hear this feedback, their
relationships are too far gone to be salvaged.
Now, it’s easy to assume that someone who is internally self-aware would also
be externally self-aware—that being in touch with our feelings and emotions
helps us tune in to how we’re seen. But strangely, research (mine and others’) has
often shown no relationship between them—and some studies have even shown an
inverse one! You probably know someone who loves to gaze at their own navel
but has precious little understanding of the way they’re coming across. For
instance, I have an acquaintance who spends thousands of dollars each year on
therapy and meditation retreats to “work on himself,” but his friends see him as
oblivious and insensitive—and he has absolutely no idea. The other side of the
coin is also dangerous. Being too fixated on how we appear to others can prevent
us from making choices in service of our own happiness and success.
The bottom line is that to become truly self-aware, you have to understand
yourself and how others see you—and what’s more, the path to get there is very,
very different than what most people believe. But if this sounds intimidating or
untenable, there is good news. My research has shown that self-awareness is a
surprisingly developable skill.
The colonel’s epic battle finally happened on the morning of July 3. An enormous
force of 700 enemy soldiers, commanded by the half brother of one of the
massacred scouts, rounded on the colonel’s flimsy fortress in three huge columns.
Despite the size of the opposing army, the colonel was convinced he would be
victorious, just as he’d been the last time.
From the cover of the forest, the enemy began to rain bullets upon them. And
because their position was so utterly unprotected, the colonel’s men could return
fire only by popping up from their trenches and shooting blindly. Mostly, they
missed their targets. And just when things didn’t seem like they could get much
worse, a torrential downpour began to drench the meadow, turning their fort into
a mud pit and rendering their ammunition useless.
The battle lasted only a day, but the colonel would pay an astronomical price.
Compared to just 30 enemy casualties, 100 of his men lay dead or wounded in
the muddy, blood-soaked meadow. On July 4, the colonel surrendered, signing a
document in a language he didn’t speak. (In so doing, he would inadvertently
admit to perpetrating war crimes, and the fallout would dog him for months.)
In a final act of humiliation, as the colonel and his remaining men marched
back home, they were helpless to stop the enemy from looting their baggage as
they departed. Following their narrow escape from this unmitigated calamity, the
colonel’s regiment was divided into 10 smaller companies. And rather than accept
a demotion to captain, he quit.
But here’s what I didn’t tell you about this embarrassing battle and the
hopelessly self-deluded man responsible for it. The year was 1754. The place was
Great Meadows, located in present-day Pennsylvania. And the colonel was none
other than George Washington. The events at Fort Necessity soon snowballed into
the Seven Years’ War, and as English author Horace Walpole writes, “The volley
fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America [would] set the world on
fire.” It would also be the first—and last—time that Washington would ever
surrender to his enemy.
Given Washington’s reputation as a heroic general, brilliant statesman, and
father of our nation, his behavior as a 22-year-old rookie is pretty shocking. But
that’s precisely the point: though he became a wise, restrained, self-aware
statesman, he started out as a brash, arrogant, unaware upstart. As historian
W. W. Abbott put it, “more than most, Washington’s biography is the story of a
man constructing himself.” And if we examine that process of construction, we
unearth many clues about what a successful self-awareness journey looks like.
Where Washington 1.0 couldn’t see or acknowledge his shortcomings,
Washington 2.0 reveled in searching them out. “I can bear to hear of imputed or
real errors,” he declared. “The man who wishes to stand well in the opinion of
others must do this.” Where Washington 1.0 didn’t care what anyone thought of
him, Washington 2.0 “studied every side of [important decisions], analyzing how
his actions would be perceived.” Where Washington 1.0 favored fantasy over
reality, Washington 2.0 believed in “consult[ing] with our means rather than our
wishes.” Where Washington 1.0 suffered from delusions of grandeur,
Washington 2.0 tempered his ambition with humility and service to the greater
good. When Congress elected him president, for instance, he modestly
responded, “While I realize the arduous nature of the task which is conferred on
me and feel my inability to perform it…all I can promise is only that which can
be accomplished by an honest zeal.”
Here’s the key point: although there was only one George Washington, there
are so many others—professionals, parents, teachers, students, artists—who have
made similar self-awareness transformations. I have spent the last three years
researching such outliers: people who have made remarkable, against-the-odds
improvements in their self-knowledge and reaped the resulting rewards.
Throughout this book, you’ll hear their inspiring and instructive stories.
Yet studying these outliers wasn’t my original plan. When I first began my
research, after reviewing every study on self-awareness my team and I could get
our hands on, I decided to interview a few dozen people who fit our criteria for
high self-awareness. My logic was that if I could learn what they were doing, I
would unlock the secret formula for everyone else. But I hit a brick wall that, in
hindsight, I should have anticipated. Interviewing people to whom self-knowledge
came naturally—and who had always been self-aware, at least as adults—turned
out to be surprisingly pointless. When I asked my interviewees what they did to
stay self-aware, they said things like “I don’t know—I guess I just try to reflect on
myself,” or “I’ve never thought about it. I just do it,” or “I guess I was born this
way.”
Suddenly, I had an epiphany: if I wanted to hack the code of self-awareness, I
wasn’t going to find the answer in those who came by it naturally. Instead, I had
to find people who had made dramatic, game-changing improvements in selfinsight over the course of their adult lives. In other words, I needed to study selfaware people who didn’t start off that way.
As we began our search for these self-awareness savants, my research team and
I adopted two stringent and unwavering criteria. The first was that they had to be
high in both types of self-awareness—internal and external—as rated both by
themselves and someone who knew them well. Second, they needed to have
begun their adult lives with low to moderate levels of self-awareness but
dramatically improved it over time, again as rated by themselves and someone
who knew them well.
After surveying thousands of people from all around the world, our team
identified 50 individuals who fit our two criteria. One of my research assistants
playfully but appropriately began to refer to them as self-awareness unicorns—
after all, they were rare, special creatures that most people didn’t believe even
existed!—and the term stuck. Our self-awareness unicorns came from all walks
of life, and remarkably, there were no patterns by job type, industry, age, gender,
education, national origin, or any other demographic characteristic. They were
professionals, entrepreneurs, artists, students, teachers, stay-at-home parents,
executives (even a Fortune 10 CEO), and more. But this diverse group did have
two things in common: a belief in the supreme importance of self-awareness and
a commitment to develop and hone it throughout their lives.
To help you get a better understanding of what a self-awareness unicorn really
looks like, let me tell you about the first time I realized I was in the presence of
one.
It was almost exam time at the Government Secondary School in Chibok,
Nigeria, and 276 girls were deep in hard-earned sleep. In the early hours of April
14, 2014, their peace was suddenly shattered by a group of men bursting into the
darkness of their dormitory. The men reassured the panicking and confused girls,
“We’re security guards. We’re here to assist you.”
Once the now-terrified students had left the safety of their dorm, they were
loaded onto trucks at gunpoint and driven to a fortified camp in the Sambisa
Forest. The men were, in fact, members of the Nigerian terrorist organization
Boko Haram. Though at the time I’m writing this, 57 of the girls managed to
escape and 23 have been released or rescued, it’s hard to say whether the
remaining 196 will ever be found. And though this story received worldwide
attention, what isn’t widely known is that the Nigerian military had four hours’
warning about the attack. They also knew exactly where the girls were being held.
And yet they did nothing.
Far from the Sambisa Forest, a manager at a Nigerian oil-and-gas company
was in New York City when she heard the news. Initially, she dismissed it as
impossible. But 34-year-old Florence Ozor soon realized that it was tragically and
unacceptably real. She had to do something—but what?
Florence had always felt most comfortable at home with her nose in a book.
She wasn’t outgoing and had always intentionally stayed under the radar, both at
work and in her community. And as someone who kept her head down to avoid
being labeled self-promoting or arrogant, Florence certainly wasn’t someone
you’d expect to see on the front lines of the war on terror. But in a divine act of
timing, she’d recently had a profound insight that would alter the course of her
entire life. If self-awareness is a journey, insights are the “aha” moments
along the way. They’re the fuel powering the souped-up sports car on the
highway of self-awareness: with them, we can step on the gas pedal; without
them, we’re stranded on the side of the road.
And Florence was about to hit the gas. Just days before the Chibok girls were
abducted, she was in Washington, D.C., attending an orientation for a coveted
four-week mentoring program put on by Fortune magazine and the U.S. State
Department. One morning, Florence was sitting in a breakout session on engaging
the media to create social change that was making her pretty uncomfortable. To
her, the session’s call to action seemed to be to hang out a neon sign for the media
that said “Look at me!” She’d always stood for justice, but not publicly—
Florence was more inclined to fight these battles in small circles. As an introvert,
she’d feared that stepping onto the world stage would let too many people into her
space, and the inevitable result would be a loss of privacy and control.
But shortly after the session ended and Florence returned to her hotel room, a
dam suddenly burst inside her. Her desire for privacy, she realized, was nothing
compared to the changes she wanted to effect in the world. And the day the
Chibok girls were abducted, this resolve profoundly deepened. She made an
instinctive and instantaneous decision: no matter what the risk, no matter what
she’d have to give up, it was a moral imperative to take a stand to bring the girls
home. Never again will I run away from something just because I’m scared of the
spotlight, she vowed, I’ve always been a fighter—why not let the world know it?
That is who I really am.
By the time Florence had returned home from New York, the
#BringBackOurGirls movement had begun to sweep the world. But her
government was still doing nothing. Around that time, a remarkable woman
named Hadiza Bala Usman organized a group to demand a response from both
the international community and the Nigerian government. Armed with the
newfound insight that she was capable of creating a wide social impact, Florence
joined the group’s first protest in the capital city of Abuja. They gathered in the
pouring rain near the city’s Unity Fountain, an enormous cement monument with
a cascade of water soaring many stories into the sky. Holding the protest here
wasn’t just a signal of their intent—unity—they also needed to be close to the
country’s national assembly.
The protesters would continue to gather there every day until their message was
heard. In the process, they faced intimidation and harassment by hired thugs who
chased them with sticks, stole their phones and cameras, and even broke chairs
over their backs, all while indifferent police and public servants looked on. But
nothing has diminished their will. Florence and her compatriots will continue to
demand action until the girls are safely home.
People tell Florence all the time how surprised they are that she stepped out of
her small circle and into public life. Initially, she says, she even surprised herself,
but she came to realize that this resolve wasn’t entirely new—it just hadn’t been
brought out this powerfully before.
And since that time, her growing notoriety (both online and offline) has
allowed her to make a deeper and more profound mark on her country, her
continent, and her world. Through her newly formed Florence Ozor Foundation,
for example, Florence and her team are focused on creating opportunities,
inspiring success, and fostering prosperity on the African continent. In 2014, they
spearheaded a civic, non-partisan initiative to educate and engage Nigerian
citizens in the electoral process. They began a far-reaching media campaign that
shaped the conversation and ensured that Nigerians knew where (and why) to
vote. When the election was postponed, they partnered with organizations to
organize protest marches, making the emphatic statement that the Nigerian
people would not accept any more postponements. And it was thanks in large part
to their efforts that, in spite of the unprecedented threat of terrorism and
violence, nearly 30 million Nigerians turned out for the presidential election on
March 28, 2015.
Florence’s remarkable commitment to self-awareness has helped her make
choices in service of her long-term success and happiness. It’s helped her realize
the impact she can have on the world. It’s helped her find her life’s calling. And
with each passing day since the pivotal insight that steered her in a new direction,
she has found that the more people she reaches, the bigger difference she can
make. (Incidentally, as someone who knows Florence well, I have absolutely no
doubt that she will accomplish her greater vision, perhaps, as I often tell her, as
the first female president of Nigeria.)
But what’s just as remarkable about Florence is that this particular insight was
just one among many others. That’s the thing about unicorns—they know that
self-awareness isn’t a one-and-done exercise. It’s a continual process of
looking inward, questioning, and discovering the things that have been there all
along. Just like George Washington, Florence Ozor is a study in the
transformative power of self-awareness.
While researching this book, I was lucky enough to interview Alan Mulally, the
former CEO of Ford who led one of the most successful corporate turnarounds in
history—he also happens to be a personal hero of mine. At the beginning of our
interview, I asked him a rather direct question: Assuming he got as many
interview requests as I suspected (he did: often dozens per week), why did he
agree to talk to me? As we sipped coffee on a sunny patio in Scottsdale, he
smiled. And with a twinkle in his eye, he replied, “Because no one has written this
book yet, and it needs to be written. Throughout my career and my life, there has
been one essential truth: the biggest opportunity for improvement—in business, at
home, and in life—is awareness.”
I couldn’t have said it better. Though many management thinkers and business
leaders sing the praises of self-awareness, there have been few, if any, systematic
attempts to scientifically examine where it comes from and how to get more of it.
For that reason, the central purpose of my research has been to help people
increase their self-awareness in service of their personal fulfillment and
professional success. Along the way, I made more than a few shocking
discoveries that challenged conventional wisdom, and learned that much, if not
most, of what people think improves self-awareness can actually have the
opposite effect. In the pages ahead, you’ll discover these surprising myths and
learn what it really takes to become self-aware.
I wrote Insight for anyone who wants to make the leap from selfblindness to self-insight, and in turn reap the rewards of smarter choices,
stronger relationships, and a better life. My goal is to help you avoid the
roadblocks and wrong turns; to give you tools to unlock a whole new level of selfknowledge; and to show you how to survive and thrive in an increasingly unaware
world.
In Part I of the book, you’ll learn the building blocks of and roadblocks to selfawareness. In Chapter 2, we will begin with the Seven Pillars of Insight that
separate the aware from the unaware. Once we understand what it really means to
be self-aware, we’ll then take on the roadblocks and learn how to bust through
them. Chapter 3 will examine the inner barriers that don’t just hamper selfawareness, but fill us with an unwarranted confidence that we already are self-
aware. In chapter 4, we’ll move to the biggest societal obstacle to insight:
something called the Cult of Self. Whether you know it or not, this tantalizing
sect has been trying to recruit you and everyone you know to become more selfabsorbed and less self-aware.
Part II will focus on internal self-awareness. In chapter 5, I’ll overturn the
many myths and follies around what it actually takes to improve it. You’ll
discover why introspection doesn’t always lead to insight, how those who seek the
absolute truth about themselves are the least likely to discover it, and why many
common self-awareness approaches like therapy and journaling have hidden
pitfalls. Once we’ve established what doesn’t increase internal self-awareness,
chapter 6 will show you what does, with several practical approaches that you can
apply right away.
Part III confronts the surprising myths and truths of external self-awareness
and shows us why we can’t unearth it on our own. We’ll discover that even when
we think we understand how other people see us, we’re often dead wrong. Chapter
7 will expose the biggest misconceptions that people have about external selfawareness. Despite the lip service given today to “feedback” in the business world
and beyond, it’s rare to get candid, objective data on what we’re doing well and
where we could stand to improve. I’ll give you a few approaches to bust through
these barriers and seek feedback—at work and at home—on your own terms.
Finally, in chapter 8, you’ll learn how to hear that feedback without fighting or
fleeing, and how to act on it while remaining true to who you are.
Part IV pulls back to look at the bigger picture. Chapter 9 will examine how
good leaders foster self-awareness in their teams and organizations. You’ll see
why trying to force team candor can be a surprisingly costly mistake—if you
don’t have certain building blocks in place first, your efforts will backfire,
creating less insight and more silence. I’ll end with a step-by-step process (one
I’ve used for more than a decade) for your team to exchange feedback in a safe,
direct, productive way.
Chapter 10 has the lofty but important goal of helping you survive and thrive in
an increasingly delusional world. When I talk with people about my research, they
often ask, “Can you please help me deal with [insert name of delusional person
they know]?” We certainly can’t force others to become self-aware, but there are
a surprising number of strategies that can reduce their negative impact, and in a
few cases, even help them be less delusional. I’ll end the book with my Seven-Day
Insight Challenge, a practical and battle-tested tool to help you engineer a few
quick wins in your self-awareness journey. And if you’re interested in a more
“block and tackle” guide, I encourage you to download the workbook available at
www.insight-book.com.
Ultimately, there are two types of people—those who think they’re self-aware
and those who actually are. My bold vision is to create a world filled with the
latter. The barriers to self-awareness are numerous, but with the help of outside
eyes and a few powerful tools, they are not impossible to navigate. And when we
do, we’re laying the foundation for a whole new level of confidence and success.
After all, without insight, how can we chart a course that will bring us joy and
happiness? Or create deep and lasting relationships? Or fulfill our true purpose?
I’m hoping that this book will be a powerful wake-up call to three simple facts:
that self-awareness is the exquisite foundation to a life well lived, that it is
possible to make the journey, and that the courage and effort it takes to get there
are well worth it.
*1 Throughout the book, I’ll set key terms, tools, and key takeaways in bold type so it’s easier to
refer back to them.
*2 I’m often asked how self-awareness is related to emotional intelligence. The simple answer is
that whereas emotional intelligence is primarily about awareness and regulation of emotions in
ourselves and others, self-awareness is a much broader term: it covers our internal
characteristics that go beyond emotions—our values, passions, aspirations, fit, patterns,
reactions, and impact on others—as well as how we’re seen by other people.

The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not
understand.
—FRANK HERBERT
For thousands of years, the Mayans were the dominant society in Mesoamerica.
*1
Yet until archeologists began to study this extraordinary civilization in the early
1800s, their ruins lay dormant for nearly a millennium. Since that time, we’ve
unearthed remarkably specific details about the Mayan way of life. Long before
the advent of what we know of as the modern calendar, for instance, the Mayans
measured time using days and months. They had a complex grasp of astronomy.
They cultivated crops in the unlikeliest of places. They created one of the first
written languages. They built massive palaces and pavilions without metal or
machines, and they are even thought to have discovered how to make rubber.
But in the midst of these groundbreaking discoveries, there was one much
larger mystery that plagued archeologists for more than a century. As one of the
most populous civilizations in human history, the Mayans reached an all-time
high in AD 800, and yet by AD 950, 95 percent had mysteriously vanished.
Scientists developed several theories as to why this occurred—a catastrophic
event like an earthquake or volcano, a virus brought by Spanish settlers, a
gruesome civil war—but for many years, there were no concrete answers, and the
question vexed scientists for decades.
But all along, the evidence had been staring them in the face—they just hadn’t
stitched the information together in the right way. Then, finally, someone did. In
his 2005 book Collapse, geographer Jared Diamond proposed that the Mayans’
disappearance was the combination of massive deforestation and prolonged
drought, which caused crops to fail, trade to shift, and cities to be slowly
swallowed by the rainforest as survivors moved away. Though there isn’t total
agreement, most scientists believe that Diamond finally solved the central
mystery of the Mayans once and for all.
The science of self-awareness has followed a remarkably similar pattern. Just
as the Mayan ruins lay dormant for centuries before being discovered by
archeologists, the topic of self-awareness can be traced as far back as 600 BC—
yet it’s only been subjected to scientific scrutiny in the last 40 years. For
millennia the discipline of self-knowledge was confined to philosophy and
religion. Roman philosopher Plotinus believed that happiness was achieved by
knowing our true self. And perhaps most famously, the seven sages of ancient
Greece inscribed the phrase “know thyself” at the entry of the Temple of Apollo
at Delphi, a mantra that Plato later reinforced in the teachings of Socrates.
And though most people associate self-awareness with Buddhism, nearly every
religious tradition recognizes its importance. In chapter 1, we saw the Christian
parable about the planks in our (and others’) eyes. Confucius advised that to
govern others, one must first govern oneself. The Hindu Upanishads said that
“enquiry into the truth of the Self is knowledge.” In the Jewish faith, selfknowledge has been called “the prerequisite for any self-improvement.”
Avicenna, a tenth-century Muslim philosopher, wrote that “self-awareness is
essential to the soul and [our] awareness of ourselves is our very existence.”
But sadly, when self-awareness researchers finally had the chance to catch up,
they made many of the same mistakes the Mayan archeologists did, spending
years focused on surprisingly myopic details at the expense of bigger, more
important questions. The result? Piles of disjointed, often peripheral research that
no one even bothered trying to stitch together. So when I set out to summarize the
current state of scientific knowledge on self-awareness, I initially came up with
more questions than answers, starting with the most central question: What was
self-awareness, exactly?
As you read in the last chapter, when I initially began my research program, I
was surprised to learn that one of the biggest obstacles to the study of selfawareness was the astonishing lack of agreement about how to define it. In the
early 1970s, psychologists Shelley Duval and Robert Wickland were among the
first to scientifically examine a construct that they called “self-awareness.” But
Duval and Wickland chose to define it as a temporary state of self-consciousness
(sort of like how you feel at a party where you don’t know anyone—the feeling of
“everyone’s looking at me and I want to go home”). Kenyon College professor
Allan Fenigstein and his team’s definition wasn’t much better, with self-awareness
being more akin to the personality trait of self-consciousness. The definitions that
other researchers concocted were all over the map—from introspection to
pondering how other people see us to the difference between how we see
ourselves and how others see us. But in my view, most of these definitions largely
missed the point.
*2 Why? Because focusing on ourselves doesn’t mean that we
understand ourselves.
In my work as an organizational psychologist, one self-evident truth has always
been that people who have a clear understanding of themselves enjoy more
successful careers and better lives—they’ve developed an intuitive understanding
of what matters to them, what they want to accomplish, how they behave, and
how others see them. Unfortunately, though, I couldn’t find this version of selfawareness anywhere in the scientific literature. In fact, the picture of a self-aware
person that most existing research painted was less of an enlightened Dalai Lama
figure and more of a neurotic Woody Allen one (no offense, Mr. Allen—I love
your movies!). Clearly, there was a huge mismatch between how researchers were
defining self-awareness and what it really looked like, at least to me, in the real
world.
So, my research team and I spent more than a year identifying what made up
this real-world self-awareness. We arrived at the following definition: selfawareness is the will and the skill to understand yourself and how others see
you. More specifically, we discovered that our unicorns—the people from our
study who dramatically improved their self-awareness as adults—possessed seven
distinct types of insight that unaware people didn’t. They understood their values
(the principles that guide them), passions (what they love to do), aspirations (what
they want to experience and achieve), fit (the environment they require to be
happy and engaged), patterns (consistent ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving),
reactions (the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that reveal their capabilities), and
impact (the effect they have on others).
In this chapter, we will uncover the essence of these Seven Pillars of Insight
and begin to paint the picture of the rich, multifaceted understanding that makes
up self-awareness. Then we’ll discuss an equally important dimension of insight:
that to be truly aware, we can’t just understand ourselves; we also need to know
how we’re seen by others.
THE SEVEN PILLARS OF INSIGHT
Benjamin Franklin was a celebrated politician and inventor and one of America’s
most beloved early statesmen. But one of the lesser-known achievements of this
Renaissance man was the incredible self-insight he gained over the course of his
adult life—indeed, because he was born nearly 30 years before George
Washington, it’s actually Franklin who might have been America’s first unicorn.
Born in Boston in 1706 as the tenth son of a soap maker, Franklin was forced
to leave school at age 10 because of his family’s financial struggles. By age 12, he
was serving as his brother James’s bound apprentice in a printing business. But in
1723, after years of fraternal mistreatment (in today’s parlance: bullying),
Franklin ran away from home to start a new life in Philadelphia. Just three years
later, he’d already failed in two business ventures and fathered an illegitimate son.
(Just as with Washington, most history textbooks seem to gloss over such
unflattering facts.)
Though Franklin was raised as a Presbyterian, he rarely attended church,
declaring that he was unimpressed and frustrated that “not a single moral
principle was inculcated or enforced.” That depressing conclusion, coupled with
his childhood struggles and ill-advised early life choices, brought about Franklin’s
commitment to “arriv[e] at moral perfection.” So, at the ripe age of 20, he
created a set of principles by which he wanted to live his life:
1. Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling
conversation.
3. Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business
have its time.
4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what
you resolve.
5. Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste
nothing.
6. Industry. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all
unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you
speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are
your duty.
9. Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you
think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
11. Tranquillity: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or
unavoidable.
12. Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness,
weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
Franklin called them “virtues,” but one could also call them values, which is
our first pillar of insight. Indeed, developing a core set of principles that guide
how we want to live our lives is a first and critical step in becoming self-aware.
In particular, values define the person we want to be and provide a standard for
evaluating our actions. In a move that puts even the most diligent self-awareness
unicorns to shame, Benjamin Franklin evaluated his actions through a “little
book” he created to track his progress, filling the margins with inspirational
quotes from Cicero, the Proverbs of Solomon, and James Thomson (along with
inventing bifocals and swim fins, Franklin also appears to have been the father of
the self-help journal). On every page was a red table with each virtue in its own
row, and each day of the week in its own column. And though he paid special
attention to one virtue every week, he reviewed the entire list at the end of each
day, making a “little black spot” if the day’s behavior hadn’t reflected that virtue.
Though not all self-awareness unicorns are as diligent as Franklin, many
employ similar techniques. One young professional, for example, has his list of
values pinned to his refrigerator: each evening while he’s cooking dinner, he
evaluates how well his actions mirrored them that day. In addition to a studied
commitment to living their own values, many also described dedicating time and
effort to instilling them in their children. (For a few questions to help you explore
your own values, take a look at appendix A.)
Henry David Thoreau once said, “Do what you love. Know your bone; gnaw at it,
bury it, unearth it, and gnaw at it still.” Thoreau had it right: when we understand
our passions—what we love to do—we’re finding a bone we can chew on
forever. My friend Jeff, a proud unicorn, can trace his passions back through the
branches of his family tree. He inherited an engineer’s brain and curiosity for
how things work from his maternal grandfather, along with a sense of
craftsmanship and an aversion to boredom from his paternal grandfather. He
spent the first part of his career bouncing around various IT jobs, from computer
system administrator to higher-education software designer. Then, quietly at first,
he began to notice that he was becoming more interested in the design of
buildings. In time, his new passion became so insistent that he could no longer
ignore it. So he packed in the IT work and landed a coveted spot in a master’s
program in architecture.
When he finally graduated and scored a job, Jeff reveled in his
accomplishment. He’d done it. He was an architect now. It was true that every day
wasn’t as perfectly fulfilling as he had imagined. There were bad clients to deal
with, of course. And sometimes there were bad bosses. As an introvert, Jeff
found working in an open-concept office to be pretty draining. And he had to
admit, some of the projects were kind of boring. A surprising number of them,
actually. Perhaps that was why he kept finding himself going home after each
increasingly trying day feeling exhausted and empty. Then one day, he finally
asked himself, “Can I do this for the next thirty years?” The answer was a clear
and resounding “No.”
Jeff spent months trying to figure out what his next step would be. On index
cards, he listed as many things that he enjoyed doing as he could think of,
arranging and rearranging them to find the patterns. It was at this point that Jeff
finally listened to the nagging voice he’d been ignoring for years. I’m not going to
be really happy, he discovered, unless I’m working for myself.
He decided to explore how that would actually feel on a day-to-day basis. And
after much consideration, Jeff finally settled on his next move. He had designed
software; he had designed websites; he had designed buildings—now he would
form a consulting company that would help artists and entrepreneurs design their
own businesses. By doing what he loved, Jeff would help others do what they
loved (talk about a virtuous circle of self-awareness). And with a final jolt of
glee, he realized that he’d be able to work out of his home office. The process of
exploring his passions also helped Jeff understand that he isn’t wired to seek the
stability of a 30-year career—he’s wired to follow his curiosity for design
wherever it leads him. (For a few questions to get you thinking about your
passions, take a look at appendix B.)
Entrepreneur Ben Huh experienced a similar “midlife” career crisis—only his
arrived a bit earlier. At the ripe young age of 23, Ben felt like his life was over.
He’d spent eighteen months, and hundreds of thousands of dollars of other
people’s money, on a startup that had gone up in smoke. The sense of shame and
defeat was just too much for the young overachiever to bear. He spent days in
bed, isolated, broke, and even haunted by thoughts of suicide. After he finally
managed to pull himself out of this bleak period, Ben realized that he needed a
plan. So he sat down with a blank sheet of paper and made a list of things he
wanted to achieve in the life he’d come so close to ending. The task turned out
not to be as easy as he thought it would be. The struggle, he has said, was in being
able to see into this future and find the “evergreen shoots” that would define it.
For anyone who knows Ben, the fact that he decided to kick-start the next
phase of his life with a list of life goals won’t seem surprising. For as long as he
can remember, he’s been ambitious and goal driven. Ben was born of humble
beginnings in Seoul, South Korea, and his family moved to the United States
when he was 14. His parents cleaned buildings to scrape by, and Ben helped as
much as he could, often fishing soda cans from the trash to recycle for pennies.
The family shared a one-bedroom apartment; Ben slept in the master bedroom,
his mom and dad on a mattress in the living room. He was determined to build a
more comfortable future for himself, and eventually became the first person in
his family to graduate from college.
And so, six years later, alone in his new home of Seattle, Ben created his list. It
included things like meeting the perfect woman, selling a company for profit, and
learning how to ride a motorcycle. Now I know what you’re thinking: I’m about to
tell you to put this book down and start making your list of life goals right away.
But hold on—Ben’s story comes with a surprising twist. Years later, he was the
successful CEO of humor website I Can Has Cheezburger (aka the birthplace of
cat memes), which he’d purchased in 2007. Yet something was still missing, and
he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
One day, he was having a seemingly ordinary lunch with one of his investors,
discussing some of the struggles he was experiencing. He said, “You know, I have
these goals. There are all these things that I want to do.” That’s when his lunch
companion dropped a bombshell that would ultimately trigger an explosive
change. “The goals aren’t important,” his investor said. “What’s important is the
process of getting there.”
That lunchtime wisdom would become the catalyst for a year-long process to,
as Ben puts it, “figure out why I am here on this planet.” Instead of adding more
bullet points to his bucket list, he started to ask himself a far more central
question: What did he really want out of life? He eventually came to realize that
the answer was simple: to experience as much of the world as he could with the
people he loved. At that point, he had the means to do something truly special
with Emily, the perfect woman he’d met (and checked off his list) in 2001. And
that’s exactly what he did.
In 2015, Ben made the decision to step down from Cheezburger, and he and
Emily promptly embarked on a once-in-a-lifetime trip around the world. Ben
doesn’t yet know where the rest of his journey will take him, but one thing he can
be certain of is this: it will be far more meaningful than simply checking a bunch
of goals off a list.
Ben’s story is a powerful example of what it really means to understand our
aspirations. What’s more, it shows that while setting goals is relatively easy, they
don’t always lead to true insight or perfect happiness. Instead of asking, “What do
I want to achieve?” the better question is, “What do I really want out of life?”
While goals can leave us feeling deflated and disappointed once we’ve achieved
them, aspirations are never fully completed; we can get up every morning feeling
motivated by them all over again. And even if we aren’t in the enviable position
of being able to quit our job and travel the world, we can all live better lives by
understanding what we want to experience and accomplish while we’re here on
this planet. (By the way, there are a few questions to help you learn more about
your aspirations in appendix C.)
I once worked with a commercial banker (and unicorn) in the early stages of a
promising career—let’s call him Sam. Sam had a quiet confidence and a rare
ability to connect with anyone, which would have set him on a path to success in
almost any industry. But these skills were particularly useful in the world of
banking, where clients appreciated the openness and confident spirit that Sam
couldn’t help but exude. And sure enough, right out of college, he scored a wellpaying job at a growing bank.
Of course, no job is perfect, and Sam quickly realized that his manager was a
major source of discomfort and frustration. Sam and his new boss seemed to
have virtually opposite work approaches: where Sam listened and connected, his
manager jumped to conclusions and bullied. When they met with potential
clients, Sam explored what they needed, but his manager would strong-arm them
to make on-the-spot decisions. Not only did this fail to bring in new clients, it
made short-term ones out of the ones they had.
On the upside, the bank provided generous individual incentives for hard work,
handsomely rewarding employees who met their goals. But Sam couldn’t help but
notice that this gave employees no incentive to work together, which was exactly
the condition under which he thrived. And there was virtually no support for
employees like Sam who valued taking the time to build trusting relationships
with prospects—there was only pressure to make quick sales.
Unnerved by the atmosphere of friction and competition, Sam felt like a fish
out of water. And with each passing day, his despair grew. He soon noticed he
was taking his stress home: instead of enjoying the precious little time he spent
with his girlfriend and his family, he was constantly preoccupied by everything
that was upsetting him at work.
But as difficult as things became, the trials Sam faced ended up having a silver
lining, because they led him to a valuable discovery about his own nature. When
he began to closely examine the causes of his stress, he discovered a strong need
to form deep and lasting relationships with his colleagues and clients. And in
realizing this would probably never happen in his current work environment, he
knew he had to leave.
Because Sam was so talented, he soon found a job with a company known for
its strong client focus, and he quickly became one of his department’s top
performers. Something had finally clicked: his mood improved, he had more
energy to serve his clients, and his life outside work became more fulfilling.
Among other positive developments, Sam proposed to his girlfriend and she
accepted. (It probably goes without saying that she will most certainly enjoy
planning a wedding with “the new Sam” far better than with “the old Sam.”)
When we determine where we fit, the type of environment we require to be
happy and engaged, we get more done with less effort, and end the day feeling
like our time was well spent. This involves understanding simple truths—like the
fact that you’re happier when you’re traveling, or that you need to go for a run
during your lunch hour—as well as deeper insights to help you live a happier life
—like the kind of partner who will fulfill you or the type of company where
you’ll thrive. (To help you clarify the best fit when it comes to your job, your
relationships, etc., you’ll find a few questions in appendix D.)
In many ways, the pillar of fit builds on the ones before it: only by knowing
what you value, what you’re passionate about, and what you want to experience in
life can you start to create a picture of your ideal surroundings. Just look at Sam.
As difficult as it was to leave his first grown-up job, he was lucky to gain such
valuable insight about where he fit so early in his career. By finding a company
that shared his values and let him do what he loved, he also found an environment
that energized rather than exhausted him. And whether you’re thinking about your
home life, your work, or the people with whom you choose to surround yourself,
energy is probably the ultimate measure of fit. At the end of the day, is your
environment creating energy or taking it away?
If I asked you to describe your personality, what would you say? You might tell
me that you’re driven, or kind. Or, if you’ve taken a personality test lately,
perhaps that you’re an INTJ/Yellow/Expediter/Analytical-Conceptual.
Psychologists often use the word “personality” to describe our patterns of
behavior. Our patterns are our consistent ways of thinking, feeling, and
behaving across situations. For example, if I snap at my co-worker one
morning, I might just be tired. But if I snap at her most mornings, not only will
she not invite me to the office happy hour, I probably have a pattern of
prickliness. Psychologists have been busy trying to distill and measure the human
personality since World War II, when personality tests were first developed to
assist in military selection. Most people in the business world have had some
experience with personality assessment, whether it’s the Myers Briggs, or the
Hogan, DISC, Insights, Emergenetics, Social Styles, NEO, Birkman, Keirsey
Temperament Sorter, True Colors…and boy, could I go on, but fortunately I
won’t—in the United States alone, there are more than 2,500 personality
assessments on the market, and some are far better than others. But even though
our unicorns saw these assessments as important self-awareness milestones, they
also reported that they were not sufficient for cultivating true insight on their
own.
What’s more, it’s not enough to shine a light on our behavioral patterns across
most situations—we must examine our patterns in specific kinds of situations as
well. Let me give you an innocuous, if slightly humiliating, personal example. A
few years ago, I was doing some work with a group of leaders in Uganda. The
retreat center where we were having our meeting was in a beautiful but secluded
area accessible only by water. When our group arrived at the dock, there were
two boats: one for us and one for our luggage. Though I wasn’t quite aware of it at
the time, I instantly became anxious and spent the rather lengthy ride internally
debating the foolish question of whether my luggage and I would ever be
reunited. Of course, just minutes later, we were.
Flash forward to another work trip—this time in Honduras to teach a
leadership workshop. My client had chartered three vans to pick everyone up at
the airport: two for us and one for our luggage. When we arrived at the hotel, all
of the bags had been unloaded, but this time, mine was nowhere to be found. We
searched everywhere and eventually discovered that it had been left on the curb at
the airport. That’s when I had a complete and total meltdown. Everything in my
bag was replaceable, and rationally I even knew that it probably would show up (it
did)—yet there I was, crying in the hotel lobby like a bully had stolen my lunch
money. It was at that point that I began to suspect a pattern: when my luggage and
I are separated, I become upset. No, irrationally upset. Given the fact that I travel
more than 100,000 miles a year, it was a pertinent epiphany.
A few months later, my husband and I were visiting his brother and sister-inlaw, who were living in Costa Rica at the time. We decided it would be fun to
hop a puddle-jumper to Bocas del Toro, a small island in Panama, for a long
weekend. Upon our arrival at the tiny airport, which consisted of one dilapidated
building where a surly woman presided over “immigration” with a tattered threering binder, the property manager of the house we rented was kind enough to give
us a ride. He threw our bags in the bed of his pickup truck and we all squeezed
into the backseat. Then, without warning, the sky opened up and a hard rain
started pelting our luggage. I pressed my face against the rear window, helplessly
watching my suitcase get drenched.
But this time, I instantly recognized what was happening. I looked at my
husband and announced, “I am irrationally upset that my bag is getting rained on.”
“I can see that,” he replied.
“I think,” I attempted, “I’ll see if I can take some deep breaths and maybe just
calm down a little.” And so I did. Understanding this pattern had helped me be
more mindful in the moment and measurably improved my day.
They say that knowledge is power, and that is certainly the case for this pillar.
Whether it’s an irrational luggage-separation anxiety or anything else, recognizing
our patterns—especially our self-defeating ones—helps us take charge. For
example, if you’re an introvert who tends to get drained after back-to-back
meetings, find a few minutes of alone time to recharge at the end of the day. If
you shoot off angry e-mails when you’ve worked too many hours, save your latenight responses in a draft folder to review in the morning. If after a few glasses of
wine you feel an inescapable urge to call your ex, give your phone to a friend
(who hopefully is also driving you home) before you start boozing. The point is to
first detect the pattern, then be able to identify it when it’s happening, and then
experiment by making different—and better—choices.
Susan was doing the best she could. Her demanding boss at the growing real
estate company where she worked often required that she put in 70-hour weeks.
Though she was constantly stressed, she threw everything she had into her role,
usually managing to keep her head above water. Or so she thought. One day,
completely out of the blue, Susan was abruptly fired.
Stunned, devastated, and angry, she blamed her superiors for this shocking turn
of events. She hadn’t given up on them—how could they give up on her? But
once her anger died down, Susan was determined to seek a silver lining in this
very dark cloud. She had a sneaking suspicion that her behavior had played a role
in her boss’s decision—she just didn’t know exactly how. As she carefully sifted
through what she called the “oh, shit moments” in her now ex-job, Susan realized
that her unawareness of her real-time reactions—that is, the thoughts, feelings,
and behaviors that reveal our capabilities—had come back to bite her. Her
reactions to her co-workers, especially under stress, were unmasking a serious
weakness: her inability to control her emotions. And especially with her boss, she
hadn’t been doing a very good job of it. He’s got to know I’m working 70 hours a
week, she’d reasoned; he should be able to let a few snippy comments go. But he
wasn’t, and she’d paid a hefty price.
Since her shocking realization, Susan has worked to manage this weakness and
better monitor her reactions. When she’s stressed, she now pays careful attention.
Is she cutting people off? Is her tone short? Does she seem agitated? When she
feels herself becoming abrupt, she makes a point to pause, think, and soften her
tone. On the rare occasion that the stress becomes too intense to manage, she will
excuse herself, take a breather, and return to the conversation.
Another upside that came from Susan’s ordeal was that she found a new job
that was much more fulfilling and much less stressful. In her new position, she
works hard not just to manage her stress, but to adapt her communication style to
others’ (rather than expect them to adapt to hers). This has been a total gamechanger, and it’s no wonder that it helped her become a bona fide unicorn.
However, it’s important to point out that when we examine our reactions, we
don’t just uncover our weaknesses; sometimes we can discover strengths we never
knew we had. Paul, a longtime operations executive, was raised in a poor town in
Colorado. His shy nature, coupled with a critical family, led him to believe from
a very young age that “everyone was better than me.” Things became so bad that
at the age of 23, he made the difficult decision to move to the big city (i.e.,
Denver) and try to make it on his own.
All Paul could afford was a tiny property in a rough part of town that was
called, somewhat ironically, Uptown. “At the time, it was really sketchy,” he told
me. “The house had been foreclosed on by the bank, and it was a mess. The
windows were all broken out. I didn’t even get a key.” But despite the dilapidated
condition of his new home, there was something about the neighborhood that
gave him a feeling of community, opportunity, and promise.
Not long after he moved in, Paul found himself chatting with a neighbor who
wanted to form a registered neighborhood organization. He didn’t know exactly
what that was, but he was happy to get involved anyway, making flyers and
passing them around to generate support. And when the organization was formed,
he helped out where he could. For the first few years, everything seemed to be
going well. Until, that is, he had a chance conversation with a friend who worked
at the city planning office.
Paul learned that the organization’s current president—a local attorney—had
been making decisions on many important matters that the group didn’t even
know about, let alone have the opportunity to discuss. “The things he was signing
off on, and approving on behalf of the neighborhood, were projects that would
have benefited some very influential businesspeople far more than us,” Paul told
me.
What put him over the edge, though, was learning that plans were in motion for
a 20-story high-rise just a few blocks from his house. And if it went ahead, it
would change the neighborhood forever. When Paul heard this news, a hidden
side of him kicked into gear. There was no way he was going to let the president
get away with this. Paul called an urgent meeting and he agreed to step down.
While Paul was surprised by his swift and decisive reaction, he was even more
surprised when he learned his neighbors’ new choice for president. It was…him.
He didn’t want to let them down, so despite some hefty reservations, he decided
to give it a try. But the new role couldn’t have come at a more trying time. In
exactly 10 days, the association would have its one and only chance to stop the
high-rise at a city planning meeting. Paul had never given a presentation before,
of any kind whatsoever, let alone to a room crammed full of people looking to
him as their leader. “So here I am,” he told me, “I’m twenty-five, I’m shy, I really
didn’t want to be president, and I’m nervous as heck.” But he stood up and
delivered his presentation as best he could.
When it was finally over, he wasn’t really sure how he’d done. That is, until one
of his neighbors, who worked for Hughes Aircraft, excitedly approached him and
practically offered him a job on the spot. Maybe, he realized, I’m not as inept at
all this as I thought.
Paul’s gut response to the actions of a slippery attorney set forth a chain of
events that opened his eyes to qualities he’d never known he had: a knack for
public speaking, a gift for working through conflict, and the initiative to step up
in the face of a challenge. And just like that, a new world began to open up for
him. Paul went on to have a career as a successful CEO and has run businesses all
over the world. And that 20-story high-rise? Naturally, it was never built. Years
later, his organization managed to get the Uptown neighborhood listed on the
National Register of Historic Places, and it’s since become one of the most
desirable places to live in Denver. (If Paul has inspired you, appendix E has some
questions to help you get at the foundational aspect of this pillar—that is, your
strengths and weaknesses.)
So far, each pillar of insight has been about us—what we value, what we’re
passionate about, what we aspire to do, what environment we need, how we
behave, how we respond to the world. But to be truly self-aware, we must also
build on that to understand our impact: that is, how our behavior affects others.
Over the course of our daily lives, we often encounter people who appear
completely oblivious to this: the boss who assigns an arbitrary emergency project
on a Friday afternoon, paying no notice to his employees’ groans and sighs. The
man in the grocery store blocking an entire aisle while a mother with a double
stroller hopelessly waits to pass. The woman who inexplicably sits through two
cycles of a left-turn arrow, seemingly unaware of the multitude of deafening
honks from the cars trapped behind her. Theoretically, these people might have a
stellar understanding of their inner selves, but when it comes to the impact that
they have on those around them, it’s like they’re completely blind.
Not surprisingly, this final pillar is especially important for leaders, as Eleanor
Allen learned the hard way. She’ll never forget the five little words that turned out
to be the most surprising—and game-changing—feedback she has ever received:
“You have got to stop.”
Just a month earlier, Eleanor had stepped into one of the greatest challenges of
her career. She and her family had moved to Puerto Rico, where she’d become
the program manager for a large and complex water infrastructure capital
improvement program. During the first few days in her new cramped but wellappointed office, it began to dawn on her that her new job was going to be
considerably more difficult than she’d imagined. With a rising sense of horror,
she discovered letter after legalese letter from their client explaining that the team
had not been supplying what had been requested, and what they had been
supplying was unacceptable. Eleanor’s team was clearly on the verge of being
fired.
But if she’d stepped into a burning building, Eleanor was also confident that
her previous experience had equipped her with a fireproof suit. After all, the
engineer by training had led challenging programs and projects all over the world,
earning the kind of problem-solving skills that could only be developed through
truly high-stakes work. She carefully triaged the situation and started firing off a
stream of regular e-mail instructions to her 100-person team. Although she would
have loved to have more time to build relationships in person, there just wasn’t
any. I’ll get to that after I put out the fire, she vowed.
A few weeks went by. And somehow, things still weren’t getting done. Again
and again, Eleanor would assign a task that was due to the client on a certain date,
which would come and go with no deliverable. She felt frustrated and alone, and
didn’t understand why she couldn’t make the changes that were needed. One
afternoon, as she sat fuming behind her paper-cluttered desk, Eleanor finally lost
her cool. How could these smart, capable people be this ham-fisted?! she exploded.
No wonder we’re about to get fired! As if on cue, her office door burst open. It
was her deputy, Evelio, a bristly, energetic, and fiercely intelligent local engineer.
“What’s the matter?” Eleanor asked. “What’s going on?”
Evelio slammed the door behind him. “You!” he said, at a volume just a hair
shy of shouting. “You have got to stop.”
“What?” she stammered, completely blindsided. “What are you talking about?”
Evelio took a step toward her. “You are driving us crazy!” he said. “No one is
reading your e-mails! No one knows what our priorities are!”
“But I…”
“Eleanor,” he said. “You’re the one who’s going to get us fired!”
She could tell her deputy had come prepared for a fight. But in a moment of
pure, brilliant, shining self-awareness, she took a breath, looked him in the eye,
and said, “Okay, then. Tell me. What should I do instead?”
“Step away from your computer,” he said. “Right now. Don’t even think about
typing another e-mail.”
She did as she was told, lifting her hands from the keyboard.
“Now get up. We’re going to go talk to our team. You have to build some trust
with them before you issue any more orders.”
Eleanor hesitated, seemingly glued to her chair.
“Come with me,” he said. “I’m going to reprogram you.”
That was when Eleanor realized her mistake. She’d been communicating with
her team all wrong—and without seeing the impact it was having on their morale
and productivity. With each e-mail, the team’s resentment mounted, causing them
to dig their heels farther into the already shaky ground. Apparently, the very inperson interactions Eleanor felt they didn’t have time for were precisely what the
team needed most.
From that moment forward, Eleanor effectively called it quits on the e-mail.
With Evelio’s help, she began to invest in really getting to know them, organizing
Friday socials, convening a Fun at Work Committee, and, with my help, holding
an offsite meeting with her leadership team. She also found every possible excuse
to spend time with her client, appearing at their office just in time for coffee or
lunch in the cafeteria. In weeks, she noticed a new and palpable feeling of trust.
As time went on, those bonds only grew: now, when there was a hiccup, they
called her to troubleshoot it instead of issuing an austere letter.
In less than six months, Eleanor and her team literally took the project from
worst to first: they became the best performing program on the island, completing
their work on time and under budget. (And they had fun!) Two years later, when
Eleanor was promoted to another role, Evelio effortlessly stepped into her shoes.
Eleanor went on to become the CEO of the global non-profit Water for People,
but says that to this day she’s never enjoyed socializing with colleagues as much
as she did with Evelio and their team in Puerto Rico (a fact to which I can also
personally attest, and not just because of the blur of mojitos I vaguely recall
during my visit).
Luckily, while increasing awareness of our impact requires commitment and
practice, it is possible (and for a few questions to help you do that, take a look at
appendix F). The key skill we must develop to read our impact is perspectivetaking, or the ability to imagine what others are thinking and feeling (this is
different from empathy, which involves actually experiencing others’ emotions).
It may seem counterintuitive that looking at the world from other people’s
perspectives would help us understand ourselves better. Let’s look at one study
that powerfully demonstrates the impact of perspective-taking on the pillar of
impact. Researchers surveyed more than 100 Chicago couples every four months
for a year on their feelings of marital satisfaction, intimacy, trust, passion, and
love for their partner. Disconcertingly, during the period of the study, the
couples, who were married an average of 11 years, showed “robust declines in
marital quality.”
The researchers wanted to see whether anything could turn the tide. So they
asked their participants to write for 21 minutes about a conflict in their marriage.
Compared to couples who simply wrote about the conflict, those who were
instructed to write about how a “neutral third party who wants the best for all”
would view the conflict saw the decline in marital satisfaction reverse completely
over the following year. By rising above their own perspective and seeing their
problems through their spouses’ eyes, they could be more level-headed and less
defensive. This mindset helped them better understand how their actions were
impacting their spouses, and in turn, start treating them better.
But the great irony of perspective-taking is that we are least likely to do it
when we need to do it most. I was recently on a Hong Kong–bound flight that,
after hours of hopelessly boarding and deplaning, was finally canceled. Of course,
all 500 passengers had somewhere to be—tears, anger, and a general sense of
panic filled the air. A brave gate agent led our angry mob to a customer-service
area manned by four airline employees. When my turn came, I hesitantly tiptoed
over to an agent—his name-tag said “Bob”—fearing that I might not like what he
was about to tell me. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Eurich,” Bob mumbled, “but I can’t get
you to Hong Kong today.”
Just as I was about to start foaming at the mouth, I noticed the fear in Bob’s
eyes. Luckily I’d recently learned about a tool developed by psychologist Richard
Weissbourd called “Zoom In, Zoom Out.” To successfully take others’ perspectives
in highly charged situations, Weissbourd advises, we should start by “zooming in”
on our perspective to better understand it. So I zoomed in: I’m hungry, tired, and
furious at the airline for its mechanical ineptitude. Next, we should “zoom out” and
consider the perspective of the other person. When I imagined what Bob was
experiencing, I thought, Poor Bob. I wonder what his day has been like.
“Were you scheduled to work this evening?” I asked. “No, ma’am,” he instantly
responded, pointing to his colleagues, “All four of us were heading home for the
evening but were called back in. I was supposed to pick my kids up from school
because my wife is out of town. I’ll probably be here until ten p.m.” I’d been
feeling pretty sorry for myself, but I now felt even worse for Bob. I asked if the
other passengers had been yelling at him. He nodded and said, “People usually get
so mad that they forget we’re people, too.”
I learned two unexpected lessons that day: first, that zooming out helped me
calm down a bit and remember that I wasn’t the center of the universe (always
helpful). Second, that taking Bob’s perspective helped me understand the impact
of my behavior—which in turn helped me to control it.
FROM INSIDE OUT TO OUTSIDE IN: THE IMPORTANCE OF
EXTERNAL SELF-AWARENESS
When Ben Franklin assembled his 13-point plan to arrive at moral perfection, his
initial list contained only 12 virtues. But upon sharing it with a close friend, he
learned that he’d completely overlooked his most significant opportunity for
improvement. As Franklin later wrote:
[My friend] kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud;
that my pride show’d itself frequently in conversation; that I was not
content with being in the right when discussing any point, but was
overbearing, and rather insolent, of which he convinc’d me by
mentioning several instances.
As we learned earlier, one of the biggest myths about self-awareness is that it’s
all about looking inward—that is, insight from the inside out. But armed with
only our own observations, even the most dedicated students of selfawareness among us risk missing key pieces of the puzzle. For example, after
you made that jokey comment to your colleague, was she genuinely amused or
taken aback? While telling your life story to the guy you just met at a cocktail
party, was he interested or did he secretly want to escape to the bar? When you
gave your boss constructive feedback on her last department-wide presentation,
was her “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind” grateful or dismissive?
To be truly self-aware, yes, we need to understand ourselves, but we also need
to know how people perceive us—and to do this, looking inward is not enough.
As we’ll soon learn, other people are the only truly reliable source of information
about how we come across. The bottom line is that self-awareness isn’t one truth.
It’s a complex interweaving of information from two distinct, and sometimes
even competing, viewpoints. There is the inward perspective—your internal selfawareness—and the outward perspective, external self-awareness, or how other
people see you. And remember, not only is there little to no relationship between
internal and external self-awareness, having one without the other can often do
more harm than good. You’ve probably witnessed the folly of people who think
they have themselves figured out but are completely oblivious to how others see
them. At the other end of the spectrum, we all know people who are so focused
on the impression they create that they don’t understand or act in their own best
interests.
Let’s pretend that internal and external self-awareness are hydrogen and
oxygen, two of the most well-known elements on the periodic table. On its own,
hydrogen is dangerous because it spontaneously ignites. (Remember the
Hindenburg?) And though oxygen is not flammable by itself, in excess, it causes
many things to burn more easily. But when you combine hydrogen and oxygen in
the right proportions, the two elements unite to create life-sustaining water. Selfawareness is a bit like that: when we couple a clear perspective on ourselves with
the ability to abandon that perspective and see ourselves as others do, this magical
combination is a tremendous force for good.
Yet given the delicate balance between internal and external self-awareness,
could there be certain pillars that are better acquired through private reflection
than feedback from others, and vice versa? We’ll return to this question a bit
later, but the answer is a qualified yes. Typically, our own views can be especially
helpful for pillars that aren’t as visible to others: our values, passions, aspirations,
and fit. For example, if a successful accountant outwardly appears to be fulfilled
in his job but secretly dreams of a career as a Broadway dancer, he is likely the
sole possessor of that information. The reverse is true for the pillars that are more
visible to others, like our patterns, reactions, and impact. Here, the self-awareness
roadblocks we’ll soon learn about can get in the way of an objective assessment,
so we may need others’ input to see ourselves more clearly. But the truth is that
for all seven pillars, it is critical to gain both an internal and external
perspective. Then and only then can we develop a true understanding of who we
are and how we’re seen.
As an example, I have a friend—let’s call her Joan—who recently sought
feedback from her co-workers to better understand her strengths and weaknesses.
Unfortunately, they not-so-delicately communicated that she needed a personality
transplant (though by all objective measures, she was performing phenomenally
at work, receiving frequent recognition from her superiors and team). Thankfully,
Joan had the internal self-awareness to see this feedback for the workplace
sabotage that it really was. When evaluated alongside what she already knew to be
true about herself, the feedback helped her realize that she wasn’t the problem—
the problem was that the company’s cutthroat culture wasn’t the right fit for her.
She’s since moved to a smaller company and I’ve never seen her happier. This is
the perfect illustration of the magic that happens when we balance internal and
external awareness.
And while balancing the two types of self-awareness isn’t always easy, our lives
are brimming with opportunities to do so. There’s a wonderful Chinese proverb
that says: “When the winds of change rage, some build shelters while others build
windmills.” Where most people choose to hide or run for cover, self-awareness
unicorns use their experiences to help power and fuel their internal and external
self-knowledge. In particular, our research shows that they have a unique ability
to recognize and learn from what I call alarm clock events: situations that open
our eyes to important self-truths. Sometimes, alarm clock events boost our
internal self-awareness by helping us see ourselves in a new or different light;
other times, they give us new data on how we’re coming across to the outside
world.
I’ve uncovered three general categories of alarm clock events. The first is new
roles or rules. When we are asked to play a new role at work or in life, or play by
a new set of rules, it stretches our comfort zone and demands more from us, and
therefore can supercharge our self-knowledge. At work, for example, this can be
things like job changes, promotions, reassignments, new responsibilities, or
joining a new group or organization. In particular, our first leadership experiences
are especially ripe opportunities for insight—in fact, when the American
Management Association surveyed 700-plus CEOs, they saw these early
formative experiences as the most impactful learning events of their careers.
But it’s not just work situations that challenge us with new roles and rules. The
same is true in other parts of life: leaving home for college, taking on a new role
in a community organization, starting a new romantic relationship, or becoming a
parent. And again, the most powerful insights can often come from early
experiences. For instance, Stanford researcher Seana Moran has found that when
a young person has made dramatic gains in self-knowledge, it’s often the result of
a situation that “challenges values or norms which may have been unreflectively
accepted from family and culture.”
The second type of alarm clock event is an earthquake. Earlier, we read about
Susan, a unicorn who achieved a new level of self-knowledge after being fired
from her job. This is an example of the kind of event that, because of its
significance and severity, shakes us to our core. Other examples might be the
death or illness of a loved one, a divorce or the end of a significant relationship,
or any serious failure or setback. Because earthquake events are so life-shattering,
they all but force us to confront the truth about ourselves. I know someone whose
husband abruptly left her, claiming that she was emotionally unavailable. She was
crushed; yet she had no choice other than to face this emotionally devastating
reality. It led her down a path to better understand how she was behaving—and
how that behavior was getting in her way—which ultimately served her in all her
relationships, romantic or otherwise.
But by definition, earthquake events also run the risk of paralyzing us,
suppressing our emotional agility and making it that much harder to absorb what
we’ve learned about ourselves, much less channel it productively. As management
professor Morgan McCall observes, the emotionally laden nature of these
situations tempts us to distance ourselves from them: we may get defensive,
blame others, become more cynical, overcompensate, shut down, or give up.
Luckily, there are steps we can take to protect against this. Our first task, as
McCall and his colleagues advise, “is absorbing the suffering rather than reacting
to it.” Susan, for example, could have continued to blame her boss and remain in
denial about her role in her dismissal. But just when she most wanted to react to
the situation, she instead chose to understand it. However, absorbing the truth
isn’t enough; we have to put that insight into action, not just owning our mistakes
and limitations but also committing to correcting them. Indeed, once Susan
accepted her situation, she vowed never to let something like that happen again.
The third type of alarm clock event is something I call an everyday insight.
One common assumption about self-awareness is that it’s only earned through
dramatic, earth-shattering events—but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Surprisingly, by a margin of two to one, our unicorns reported having gained the
most insight from more mundane situations. They mentioned instances when they
suddenly saw their behavior in a new light, whether it was through an overheard
conversation, an offhand comment, or even a bit of unexpected recognition.
Others cited developmental experiences at work, like leadership programs, 360
reviews, and so on. Some unicorns even found “aha” moments in the midst of the
most ordinary, even boring, daily activities, like exercising or cleaning.
Shortly after Susan graduated from college, for example, she and her best
friend were moving into their first apartment. When they were unpacking their
kitchen, Susan remembers her outrage upon noticing that her friend had stacked
their plastic cups in front of the glass ones in the cupboard. “No one should drink
out of plastic glasses!” she huffed. Hearing the way she came across in that
moment, Susan realized, I am having an outsized reaction to something that isn’t
important. Why am I being so controlling? In that moment, she was able to see
herself from a slightly different perspective, and it produced a big insight that
was about far more than plastic cups.
I see our findings on everyday insights as very good news: in a nutshell, we’re
just as likely to earn self-knowledge during the course of our daily lives as we are
during more challenging times. But in both cases, our unicorns didn’t just sit
around and wait for self-awareness to strike—they built windmills, turning new
information into energy to effect real and lasting change.
Now that you know the pillars upon which self-awareness is based, we can dive
into specific strategies for strengthening it, and therefore improve our choices,
our relationships, and our success. But before we do, we need to get a better
understanding of the two biggest obstacles standing in our way.
*1 Which was centered around the Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, and the
western parts of Honduras and El Salvador.
*2 There have been a few notable exceptions, like researcher Anthony Grant—we’ll learn more
about his work in chapter 5.
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you
know for sure that just ain’t so.
—JOSH BILLINGS
The toughest coaching session of my professional career began with me staring,
for what seemed like an eternity, at the top of a senior executive’s bald head. That
head belonged to Steve, a construction company boss with a bleeding balance
sheet. He’d been in the job for just four months when his CEO asked me to come
in and help him.
That morning, I’d taken the elevator to the eighth floor, waited in the reception
area, and was finally shown to Steve’s palatial office by an assistant whose voice
shook slightly when she announced me. As the door closed silently behind me,
Steve didn’t look up from his computer, acknowledging my presence only with a
long sigh and an aggressive flurry of mouse clicks. Which left me standing there,
awkwardly staring at his head and admiring the contents of a presentation cabinet.
It included a large award in the shape of a demolition ball, and that really said a
lot about the situation.
I’m not easily unnerved, but as the seconds dragged by, I began to feel the
challenge that lay ahead of me as a sensation of mild nausea. It didn’t help that I
was holding a red folder bulging with interview notes that told me just how
volatile this man could be.
“Should I take a seat?” I finally ventured.
“Please, Dr. Eurich,” he sighed impatiently, still not looking up. “Whatever
makes you comfortable.”
As I sat down and opened my folder, ready to begin, Steve pushed his chair
back. Finally, he looked at me. “Let me tell you a thing or two about my
operation here.” Then, with the restlessness of a caged tiger, he began pacing up
and down behind his desk, sharing his ambitious vision for the business and his
hardball leadership philosophy. I was impressed with his energy—I also knew
that our work together would require all he could muster.
Steve’s department, he told me, was in trouble, although I already knew that.
His predecessor had been fired because of cost overruns, so his in-the-red
business unit needed to drive growth while finding efficiencies wherever
possible. It was your classic high-stakes, “change the engine while the plane is in
the air” situation. There was no room for failure, but Steve had no doubt that he
was just the man for the task. His self-proclaimed leadership skills included
setting high expectations, rallying his troops, and being tough but fair. “I know I’ll
face challenges in this role,” he confidently stated, “but I also know how to get
the best out of my people.”
Unfortunately, Steve was totally delusional.
What I’d uncovered when I interviewed his direct reports, and what his CEO
had only begun to sense, was that Steve’s reign was already proving disastrous. In
the 16 weeks since his official promotion, three employees had already quit. A
fourth, who had recently started taking blood pressure medication because of the
“Steve stress,” was halfway out the door. Though not a single member of Steve’s
team questioned his capabilities and experience, they thought that he was—to use
a more polite term than they did—a complete jerk. He’d bark orders at them,
question their competence, and scream at them in a way they found
unprofessional and frightening. And they weren’t a bunch of whiners, either. I
found them to be seasoned, seen-it-all types who weren’t looking to be coddled.
Steve had simply pushed them too far.
To be fair, Steve had grown up in the rough-and-tumble industry of
construction, where he’d learned that great leadership often meant “he who yelled
the most.” And while this hard-charging style may have been passable in the past,
it was a costly miscalculation in his current role, especially against the backdrop
of the company’s collaborative culture.
As he paced around his new office, proudly detailing all the ways he was
exactly the visionary leader his company needed during this difficult period, I
marveled at how utterly oblivious he was. His behavior was hurting his
employees’ morale, his team’s performance, and his own reputation. Even losing
some of his best people hadn’t shaken his self-image as an effective and respected
leader. But Steve’s team had had enough of his bullying. And somehow, I had to
find a way to break that to him.
THE EPIDEMIC OF STEVE DISEASE
A young Haley Joel Osment is wrapped up in a pink blanket, his head resting on a
soft pillow. He intensely stares at Bruce Willis. “I want to tell you my secret
now,” he begins. The camera zooms in tightly to his terrified face.
“I see dead people.”
“In your dreams?” Willis asks. Osment stares back silently, his sad eyes
indicating that’s not where he sees them. “While you’re awake?”
“Walking around like regular people,” Osment replies. “They only see what
they want to see. They don’t know they’re dead.”
“How often do you see them?”
“All…the…time.”
This scene is, of course, from the movie The Sixth Sense, and young Osment
(spoiler alert) actually does see dead people. But substitute the word “delusional”
for the word “dead” and it would be just as true of our world today. The scene
reminds us that self-delusion—that is, seeing only what we want to see—is all
around us. But if you prefer the radio over movies, take humorist Garrison
Keillor’s invented town of Lake Wobegon, where every child is above average.
We chuckle at this statistically impossible trope because we see such delusion
everywhere: at work, in class, at PTA meetings, at the grocery store, even in our
own homes.
And almost everyone who has spent time in the business world has encountered
a boss or colleague like Steve. You know the type: people who, despite their past
success, obvious qualifications, and undeniable intelligence, display a complete
lack of insight into how they are coming across. The boss who thinks his detail
orientation makes him a good manager, but in reality is simply infuriating his
employees; the client who thinks she’s a great partner but is known the office
over for being impossible to work with; the father who doesn’t believe he’s
teaching his kids to be racist, but grips his child’s hand and crosses the street
every time a person of color walks toward them. The common factor here? All
are completely confident in their self-views, and all are completely wrong.
According to behavioral economist and Nobel Prize laureate Daniel
Kahneman, human beings possess an “almost unlimited ability to ignore our
ignorance.” Research suggests that we tend to think we’re smarter, funnier,
thinner, better-looking, more socially skilled, more gifted at sports, superior
students, and better drivers than we objectively are. Scientists have dubbed this
the “Better Than Average Effect.” But in honor of our “above average” executive,
I call it Steve Disease.
Of course, mathematically speaking, 49 percent of us will be above average on
any given measure. But often, where we actually fall on the bell curve has little
resemblance to where we think we fall. In one study of more than 13,000
professionals in financial services, technology, nursing, and more, researchers
found almost no relationship between self-assessed performance and objective
performance ratings. In a second investigation with nearly 1,000 engineers in the
San Francisco Bay area, more than 33 percent rated their performance in the top
5 percent relative to their peers—and only one brave soul labeled himself as
below average.
Empirical evidence of Steve Disease also extends outside the walls of
corporate America. In one famous study, a full 94 percent of college professors
thought they were above average at their jobs. And in another—and perhaps
disturbingly for anyone planning a medical procedure in the near future—surgical
residents’ self-rated skills had literally no relationship with their board exam
performance (although, thankfully, that’s probably why they have a board exam).
It’s likely no surprise that the consequences of Steve Disease are as severe as
the problem is pervasive. At work, for example, employees who lack selfawareness bring down team performance, reducing decision quality by an average
of 36 percent, hurting coordination by 46 percent, and increasing conflict by 30
percent. In aggregate, companies with large numbers of unaware employees show
worse financial performance: one study with hundreds of publicly traded
companies found that those with poor financial returns were 79 percent more
likely to have large numbers of employees who lacked self-awareness.
As anyone who has worked for a delusional boss can attest, Steve Disease is
especially infectious—and disastrous—in the ranks of management. As we
learned earlier, when leaders are out of touch with reality, they’re six times more
likely to derail. Being overconfident can also blind managers to their employees’
brilliance, causing them to underestimate their top performers’ contributions. And
though people in positions of power don’t usually start off any less self-aware (it
requires a certain measure of self-awareness to ascend to a leadership position in
the first place), their delusion often grows with their rank and seniority. Early
successes give way to an intoxicating pride that blinds them to truths they can and
should be seeing.
And as their power increases, so does their degree of overestimation.
Compared to managers and front-line leaders, for example, executives more
dramatically overvalue their empathy, adaptability, coaching, collaboration, and
(ironically) self-awareness skills. What might be even more shocking, though, is
that compared to their less experienced counterparts, experienced leaders are
more likely to overestimate their abilities. Similarly, older managers tend to
misjudge their performance relative to their boss’s ratings of them far more than
their younger peers do.
*1
But wait. Shouldn’t a leader’s experience, age, and seniority increase insight?
There are a few reasons why this isn’t the case. First, senior positions are often
complex, with murky standards of performance and subjective definitions of
success. Second, above a certain level, there usually aren’t reliable mechanisms to
supply honest feedback sufficient for gauging performance on these more
subjective measures. Making matters worse, many powerful people encircle
themselves with friends or sycophants who don’t challenge or disagree with them.
As professor Manfred Kets de Vries put it, they’re surrounded by “walls, mirrors
and liars.” And finally, executives are often rewarded for delusion—for example,
overconfident CEOs tend to be paid more than their peers, and as their
compensation packages grow, so do their levels of overconfidence. In reality,
CEO compensation has less to do with talent or performance than it does with PR
and perception; no board wants their CEO to be below average, so no one lets
their packages lag market expectations. These companies might as well be
headquartered in Lake Wobegon!
Yet regardless of our degree of overestimation—and whether we’re in a
position of power or not—our misguided beliefs follow us home, sometimes
taking an equal toll on our personal lives. Researchers have found that one in four
people has emotionally distant personal relationships because of their bullish
views of their personality and behavior. Overconfidence can also affect how we
parent. For example, the majority of mothers and fathers grossly overestimate the
number of words they speak to their pre-verbal children (children who hear more
words at home develop better vocabularies, higher IQs, and better academic
performance). Eighty-two percent of parents also think that they’re capable of
handling their finances despite holding too much debt and neglecting to build
long-term savings, and it’s these same parents who fancy themselves as great
financial management teachers to their kids—that’s about as likely as poor Steve
winning “Boss of the Year.”
Now, it probably comes as no shock to hear that this delusion rubs off on our
children, which just perpetuates the cycle. One study surveyed more than a
million high school seniors on a number of personality characteristics and
revealed that a full 25 percent placed themselves in the top 1 percent in their
ability to get along with others. How many thought they were below average?
Two percent.
*2 And despite many parents’ hopes that their kids will miraculously
develop self-awareness on the first day of college, that generally isn’t the case.
When researchers asked university students to compare themselves to their peers
on traits like “polite,” “responsible,” “cooperative,” and “mature,” students in the
study rated themselves as above average on a whopping 38 out of 40 traits.
Making matters worse, the least competent people tend to be the most
confident in their abilities, a finding first reported by Stanford psychology
professor David Dunning and then-graduate student Justin Kruger. Their research
revealed that participants who performed the worst on tests of humor, grammar,
and logic were the most likely to overestimate their abilities. Those who scored in
the 12th percentile, for example, believed on average that their ability fell in the
62nd. This phenomenon came to be known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and
it’s been replicated with dozens of other skills like driving, academic
performance, and job performance.
All this being said, is it possible that deep down, people know they’re
incompetent but just don’t want to admit it to others? Strangely, the DunningKruger Effect still surfaces even when people are incentivized to be accurate
about their abilities. So it seems that the incompetent are not in fact lying; the
more likely possibility is that they are, according to David Dunning, “blessed with
inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels…like knowledge.”
In the very nature of this phenomenon lies a troubling paradox: If you were
afflicted with Steve Disease, would you even know? Researchers Oliver Sheldon
and David Dunning designed a series of ingenious studies that revealed just how
oblivious even the smartest, most successful people are about their delusions.
They began by bringing MBA students—intelligent, driven professionals with an
average of six years’ work experience—into their lab and giving them an
assessment of emotional intelligence (EQ), which, as we learned earlier, is a
critical skill for success at work and in life. You’d think that if you presented
clever people with evidence that they needed to improve their EQ, most would
want to take steps to do so. But that’s not what Sheldon and Dunning found.
When given the opportunity to purchase a discounted book on improving EQ, the
students with the lowest scores—that is, those who most needed the book—were
the least likely to buy it.
When giving keynotes to organizations, I’ll often present the statistic that 50
percent of managers are ineffective. After dozens and dozens of talks all over the
world, the reaction I get is always exactly the same. At first, people in the
audience politely smile. So I ask them, “Do you know what this means?” Then,
after an invariably long pause, I instruct them to look to their left, then their right.
Nervous laughter breaks out, and they finally get it. The terrible manager is either
them or the person next to them! At that point, everyone starts looking around
hesitantly at each other, thinking, Well, since it isn’t me, it must be this guy next to
me, right?
The point is that it’s uncomfortable to consider the possibility that we’re not as
smart or skilled or emotionally intelligent as we think we are—after all, to
paraphrase Daniel Kahneman, identifying other people’s mistakes and
shortcomings is much easier and far more enjoyable than facing our own. But
when people are steeped in self-delusion, they are usually the last to find
out. The good news about Steve Disease is that it is curable, and in a moment,
we’ll explore how. But first, it’s worth asking: Why are we this delusional in the
first place?
While the capacity for self-awareness exists in nearly all human beings,
absolutely no one is born with it. As infants, we think we’re the center of the
universe. After all, at that age, we’re little more than a mewling bag of constant
demands that usually get met, as if the world itself was set up for the sole purpose
of serving our needs. (I have a client who recalls thinking as a young child that
the world literally revolved around him and therefore only existed during his own
waking hours!) Our first awareness milestone is therefore to gain an
understanding of ourselves as separate from the world around us.
Just when we’re strong enough to push ourselves off our knees, and happen to
see a reflection of ourselves in a mirror, we coo at the stranger looking back. But
around age two, we begin to learn that this person is actually us. We’re not the
whole world after all—we’re just another thing that lives in it. With this
knowledge, obviously, comes a potentially disappointing fall in status. And with
that comes the disquieting onset of emotions such as embarrassment and envy.
Yet at this point, while we may have realized that we’re just another “self”
surrounded by other selves, our brains haven’t yet developed the ability to
objectively evaluate that self. Studies show that when young children rate how
they are performing in school, for example, their evaluations have little to no
resemblance with their teachers’. In other words, we don’t yet know the
difference between our wish and our reality. The mere desire to be the best and
prettiest ballplayer in the room means that we are the best and prettiest ballplayer
in the room. Adorable as that may be at this age, these inflated views persist
despite repeated revelations of their inaccuracy. (You might even know a few
adults who have yet to overcome this affliction, but we’ll get to that.)
By our pre-teen years, the fresh, early breezes of awareness begin to blow in.
Here, we start to develop the capacity to label our behaviors with descriptive
traits (like “popular,” “nice,” and “helpful”) and experiment with a more balanced
self-view—that is, the possibility that we might actually possess a few less-thanideal characteristics. Then comes the tempest. During our stormy teenage years,
we discover a new and apparently limitless capacity for introspection. Building a
coherent theory of who we are, with all our apparent contradictory moods and
urges, can be tortuous. And just as our self-views become increasingly jumbled
and complex, we begin to spend an almost unreasonable amount of time
wondering what others think of us. As confused as we are during this period,
we’re just as likely to think irrationally negative things about ourselves as we are
positive ones. This example, from Susan Harter’s book The Construction of Self,
should really take you back to that fun process:
What am I like as a person? You’re probably not going to
understand. I’m complicated!…At school, I’m serious, even
studious…[but] I’m a goof-off too, because if you’re too studious,
you won’t be popular….[My parents] expect me to get all A’s and
get pretty annoyed with me…So I’m usually pretty stressed-out at
home, and can even get very sarcastic…But I really don’t understand
how I can switch so fast from being cheerful with my friends, then
coming home and feeling anxious, then getting frustrated and
sarcastic with my parents. Which one is the real me?
Most of us spend years wrestling with these contradictions, desperate to pin
down the essence of our teenage personalities. For some, this self-seeking
manifests in many hours of uninterrupted brooding behind a closed bedroom
door, often accompanied by deafeningly loud music (in my case, it took the form
of long-winded journal entries that are simply too embarrassing to talk about).
Other times, it can lead to acting out: shoplifting, cutting class, or bullying.
Thankfully, as we approach our second decade on earth, we start to organize
these conflicting self-perceptions into more cohesive theories (Just because I’m
shy around people I don’t know doesn’t mean I’m not mostly outgoing). We start to
understand and embrace our attributes, our values, and our beliefs, and often
deepen our sense of what we can’t do well. We also feel a new level of focus on
our future selves, which can provide a welcome sense of direction.
But though most people show a predictable progression toward becoming selfaware, our pace varies wildly. The journey to self-awareness is therefore a bit like
the Kentucky Derby: we all begin at the same starting line, but when the gun
fires, some of us speed out of the gate, some of us progress slowly but surely, and
some of us falter or get stuck along the way.
In the absence of a committed effort to build self-awareness, the average
person makes only meager gains as they grow older.
*3 Our self-awareness
unicorns, however, are different. Though they enter childhood as equally or only
slightly more self-aware, their pace accelerates with each passing year. In the race
to insight, these Triple Crown winners break away from the pack early on and
continue to widen their lead over each stage of their lives.
Remember, though, that the behaviors needed to create and sustain selfawareness are surprisingly learnable. We just have to know where to start—
which, at least foundationally, means understanding the obstacles that prevent us
from seeing ourselves clearly. Some exist within us, and others are imposed on us
by our increasingly delusional world. For the remainder of this chapter, we’ll
focus on the inner obstacles to self-awareness—that is, how we get in our own
way, and usually without even knowing it.
THE THREE BLINDSPOTS
One of my all-time favorite psychology studies was conducted with prisoners
serving time in the south of England. Psychology professor Constantine Sedikides
and his colleagues gave the prisoners, most of whom had committed violent
crimes, a list of nine positive personality traits and asked them to rate themselves
on each in comparison to two groups: average prisoners and average nonincarcerated community members:
• Moral
• Kind to others
• Trustworthy
• Honest
• Dependable
• Compassionate
• Generous
• Self-controlled
• Law-abiding
Now imagine you find yourself in jail for, let’s just say, armed robbery. It
seems hard to believe that you’d use any of the above traits to describe yourself,
right? And yet the prisoners did. In fact, not only did they rate themselves as
superior to their fellow inmates on these measures, on no fewer than eight out of
nine traits, they even thought they were superior to average non-incarcerated
community members. The one exception? Trait number nine. According to
Sedikides, inexplicably, “they rated themselves as equally law-abiding compared
to community members.” (Don’t think about that for too long or your head will
explode—trust me.)
This study is a stark, if somewhat ludicrous, example of just how blind we can
be to the truth about ourselves. When it comes to the inner roadblocks that most
limit our success, there are three main areas where we get in our own way. And
the more we ignore The Three Blindspots, the more pernicious they become.
Professor David Dunning (who first showed us that the least competent people
are also the most confident) has spent most of his career trying to understand why
we’re so terrible at evaluating our own performance. Though there is admittedly
no satisfying single explanation, Dunning and his colleague Joyce Ehrlinger
uncovered the powerful influence of something they call “top-down thinking” (I
call it Knowledge Blindness)—which is our first blindspot. In a series of studies,
they discovered that the opinions we have about our abilities in specific situations
are based less on how we perform and more on the general beliefs we have about
ourselves and our underlying skills. For example, participants who saw
themselves as good at geography thought they’d performed particularly well on a
geography test, even though as a group they’d scored no better than anyone else.
Ironically, the more expertise we think we have, the more harmful knowledge
blindness can be. For an example, let’s look back to 2013, when the Boston Red
Sox beat the St. Louis Cardinals in a nail-biting World Series. Before the season
began, ESPN published the predictions of 43 bona fide baseball experts on the
outcome of the season. How many do you think predicted that either Boston or
St. Louis would make it to the World Series? The answer is zero. The same was
true for the experts polled by Sports Illustrated. Baseball America’s picks
performed only slightly less terribly, with one out of ten predicting that St. Louis
would go the distance. So these 60 well-paid, highly respected baseball authorities
showed an absolutely abysmal 0.83 percent success rate in predicting the World
Series teams. Had each expert chosen two teams at random, they would have been
more than seven times more accurate!
At first glance, this seems like a freak occurrence—a statistical anomaly. But
as it turns out, experts are wrong more often than we think, and not just when it
comes to sports. In 1959, psychologist Lewis Goldberg conducted a seemingly
simple study where he compared the accuracy of expert clinical psychologists’
diagnoses with those made by their secretaries (as they were then called) to
demonstrate the important role of experience in such judgments. You can
imagine his dismay upon discovering that the experts were no better at diagnosing
psychological disorders than their inexperienced counterparts (who were actually
2 percent more accurate!).
Yet even for non-experts, being overconfident about our skills and talents can
get us into trouble. We might choose a field or specialty for which we’re poorly
suited (“I’d be a great astrophysicist; I’m good at math!”), overlook mistakes in
our personal life (“It’s okay to let my five-year-old walk to school alone; I’m a
great parent!”), or take poorly advised business risks (“We should definitely buy
this failing company; I’m great at turnarounds!”).
Our inner roadblocks don’t just create blindness about what we think we know
—they distort our perceptions about what we think we feel. To understand
Emotion Blindness, our second blindspot, imagine the following question:
On a scale from 1 to 10, how happy are you with life these days?
How would you go about answering this? Would you go with your gut instinct,
or would you thoughtfully consider the various factors in your life and made a
more measured judgment?
*4 Most people are adamant that they would use the
more thoughtful approach—after all, accurately assessing our precise level of
happiness is not an easy task. Indeed, studies show that when we’re asked how
happy we are, we have every belief that we’re considering all the available data in
a rational way. But unfortunately, our brains prefer to use the least possible effort
and therefore don’t always cooperate. So even when we think we’re carefully
deliberating a certain question, we’re actually making more of a gut decision. For
this reason, we’re surprisingly awful at judging our emotions, including happiness.
According to Daniel Kahneman and other researchers, our brains secretly and
simplistically morph the question from “How happy are you with life these
days?” into “What mood am I in right now?”
To illustrate Emotion Blindness in action, Kahneman describes a study by
German researcher Norbert Schwarz, who set out to investigate life satisfaction.
Unbeknownst to his participants, he arranged for half the group to find the
German equivalent of a dime on a nearby copy machine outside the lab. Though
they had no idea why, those who found the coin—a mere 10 cents!—
subsequently reported feeling happier and more satisfied with their lives as a
whole.
In another study, students were asked two questions: “How happy are you these
days?” and “How many dates did you have last month?” When the questions were
presented in that order, their love lives weren’t related to their overall happiness.
But when the questions were reversed, and participants thought about the number
of dates they’d been on before evaluating their happiness, those who’d gone on
more dates reported being happier.
The main danger of Emotion Blindness is that we often make decisions, even
important ones, from a place of emotion without even realizing it. In the fall of my
senior year of high school, I was deep into my search for the perfect college. My
parents and I took two separate trips, a few weeks apart, to eight schools on the
East Coast. The weather during the first visit was sheer perfection. At every
school I visited, happy students were frolicking outside, enjoying the cool, crisp
temperature and the peak fall foliage. But my second trip coincided with one of
those dreadful New England storms that dumped sheets of freezing rain and kept
the sky gray for days. Naturally, when I visited those schools, the students weren’t
so much frolicking as they were helplessly running from building to building in a
futile attempt to stay dry.
So which colleges do you think ended up on my list of favorites? You guessed
it—all four schools from my first visit and zero from my second. Though I didn’t
realize it at the time, I now know how much of an impact my emotions had on my
judgment. It can be disconcerting to realize that we’re so ill-equipped to evaluate
the thought processes that drive our decisions, but as with all blindspots, the more
aware we are of their existence, the better chance we have of overcoming them.
Which brings us to Behavior Blindness, our final blindspot. It’s also one that
most of us experience far more often than we realize. A few years back, I was
invited to deliver the closing keynote at a professional conference for engineers.
Because of our shared practical mindset and the three years I spent working at an
engineering firm, I’ve always gotten along famously with engineers, or “my fellow
geeks,” as I affectionately call them. But from the moment I set foot on stage that
day, something felt off. For the life of me, I couldn’t make my points cogently;
my jokes were bombing; and I just didn’t feel like myself.
Over the course of the hour, I became increasingly hysterical, and my inner
monologue turned into a blow-by-blow account of my incompetence. Why didn’t
that joke get a laugh? How could I have forgotten to mention that point? Why do
they seem so bored? Much to my horror, I remembered mid-talk that the bureau
agent who had booked me was in the front row. Well, that’s it, I concluded, he’ll
never recommend me to a client again.
When my talk was over, I rushed offstage just about as quickly as my legs
would carry me and ran smack into the bureau agent who’d come backstage to
find me. Ready to face the music, I asked, “What did you think?” Sure that he
was going to demand his client’s money back, I braced myself for the inevitable
torrent of criticism that was sure to follow. But his gleeful response was literally
the last thing I ever expected to hear: “Oh, my gosh. They loved it!”
Struggling to grasp how this could be possible, I asked, “REALLY?” and he
nodded earnestly. At the time, I thought he was being unnecessarily polite (i.e.,
lying). But later that day, when I checked to see how many audience members
had opted in to my monthly newsletter,
*5
I was stunned to discover that a higher
percentage had signed up than any audience I’d ever spoken to!
How could I have been so wrong? Psychologists used to think the inability to
see our own behavior clearly or objectively was the result of a perspective
problem; that we literally can’t see ourselves from the vantage point that others
can. By this account, I couldn’t have accurately evaluated my speech because I
couldn’t see myself from the same perspective as the audience did.
But this explanation turns out not to hold water. In one study, participants were
given a series of personality tests and videotaped making a brief speech. They
were then asked to watch the video and identify their nonverbal behaviors—
things like eye contact with the camera, gestures, facial expressions, and voice
volume. Because the participants could see themselves from the same angle that
others could, the researchers predicted that their ratings would be fairly accurate.
But shockingly, their ratings failed to match up with those of an objective
observer even when they were offered money for correct answers. (By now,
we’ve established that money is of little help in making us more self-aware.)
Though scientists are still working to definitively uncover the real reasons for our
Behavior Blindness, there are, as we’ll soon see, a few tools you can use to avoid
falling victim to it.
BRAVER BUT WISER: FROM BLINDNESS TO (IN)SIGHT
To understand how almost anyone can move from self-blindness to self-insight,
let’s turn back to my coaching client, Steve. As we got deeper into our work, it
was obvious that the blindspots I’ve just described were alive and well. It might
now make sense that Steve Disease is actually a combination of all three
blindspots. Steve’s knowledge blindness about his leadership expertise had given
him an overconfidence that could only be described as epic. His emotion
blindness was leading him to make decisions based on gut feelings rather than
reason. And he was completely oblivious to how his behavior was going over with
his staff.
With these forces at play, I knew that Steve would be one of my greatest
professional challenges, though he certainly wasn’t my first. After all, a central
part of my job is to tell senior executives the truth when everyone else is afraid to
or doesn’t know how (and I’m proud to report that I’ve only been fired once for
it). In so doing, I’ve found that with some effort, delusion can usually be
overcome, and even the most unseeing can learn to open their eyes—sometimes
they just need a little shove.
In Steve’s case, I was that shove, and it was going to have to be an unusually
forceful one. But before we could begin to deal with his willful resistance to selfimprovement, I first had to tackle his willful resistance to letting me get a word in
edgewise. I decided that a direct approach was necessary. With his diatribe
showing no sign of losing wind, I locked my eyes with him until he finally
stopped pacing. “Steve,” I said, “there’s no way around this. Your team hates
you.” He wouldn’t have looked more shocked if I’d stood on my chair and
claimed to be his long-lost daughter. Glancing at my folder of research, he asked,
“What did they say about me?” I had no choice but to tell him. And since his
team had warned me about his temper, I was prepared for what came next. The
raised voice. The clenched jaw. The menacing stares. The vein in his neck. And
right there across the desk, Steve’s face was turning bright red.
“How could they SAY THOSE THINGS ABOUT ME? HOW COULD THEY
SAY THAT I YELL!?”
Then, as if exhausted by his own delusion, he slumped in his chair and gazed
out the window for a good minute. The last time Steve had been silent, it had
been an attempt to demonstrate the power he believed he had over me. But this
silence had an altogether different quality. “So,” he said at last, swiveling his
chair toward me with an expression of calm intention, “I’ve been doing these
things for the last four months—or twenty years?—and nobody told me?” Indeed,
rather than face his harsh reality, he’d chosen the path of blissful ignorance,
which was easier in the moment but disastrous in the long run. That’s the problem
with blissful ignorance. It works just fine…until it doesn’t.
Many people have experienced a “come to Jesus” moment like this—an alarm
clock event that opens our eyes to the unpleasant reality that others don’t see us
the same way we see ourselves. These moments often come without warning and
can cause serious damage to our confidence, to our success, and to our happiness.
But what if we could discover the truth earlier and on our own terms? What if we
could see our behavior clearly, before it begins to hurt our relationships and
undermine our career? What if we could pair a quest for the truth with a positive
mindset and a sense of self-acceptance? What if we could learn to be braver but
wiser?
The Greek myth of Icarus is an apt metaphor. Icarus tries to escape the island
of Crete using wings that his father, Daedalus, built from wax and feathers.
Daedalus warns Icarus not to fly too high or too low: flying too low meant the sea
would weigh down the feathers and flying too high meant the sun would melt the
wax. But against his father’s instructions, Icarus decides to fly too high. And sure
enough, the wax melts, knocking him out of the air and sending him to his death.
When it comes to the way we see ourselves, we must be brave enough to
spread our wings, but wise enough not to fly too high, lest our blindspots send
us soaring straight into the sun. When we learn the truth, it can be surprising, or
terrifying, or even gratifying—but no matter what, it gives us the power to
improve.
This is what I had to help Steve understand, and I knew we had our work cut
out for us. We reviewed his feedback for hours. At first he was resistant,
searching for any excuse to counter the criticism. But to his great credit, he
slowly started to accept what he was hearing. By the end of our first session, I was
seeing a new side of him. “I’ve never questioned my leadership approach,” he told
me. “Not for years, anyway. Why would I? Everything’s always been pretty great.
But the last couple months, something’s felt off. I didn’t know what it was.
Results haven’t been what I was expecting, and the worst thing is, it’s been
following me home.” He smiled ruefully.
“The good news is that these problems are totally fixable,” I told him. “And
you’ve just taken a major step.”
“Really? What did I do?” he exhaustedly inquired.
I grinned. “You just accepted reality.”
Indeed, the commitment to learn and accept reality is one of the most
significant differences between the self-aware and, well, everybody else. The
self-aware exert great effort to overcome their blindspots and see themselves as
they really are. Through examining our assumptions, constantly learning, and
seeking feedback, it’s possible to overcome a great many barriers to insight.
Although it would be unreasonable to expect that we can see or eliminate our
blindspots altogether, we can gather and assemble data that helps us see ourselves
and the impact of our behavior more clearly.
The first step is to identify our assumptions. This may sound obvious, but
unfortunately, it’s rare to question our assumptions about ourselves and the world
around us, especially for ambitious, successful people. I witnessed a telling
example of this when I used to teach a weeklong executive strategy program. On
the morning of the second day, participants would enter the training room and
find a small, plastic-wrapped puzzle at each table. When we told them that they’d
have five minutes to assemble the puzzle, many of these powerful people would
scoff at such a silly activity, wondering why we were wasting their valuable time.
Humoring us, they’d open the plastic seal, dump the puzzle on the table, and begin
turning the puzzle pieces, which were blue on one side, face-up (or what they
assumed was face-up). After a few minutes, having assembled only about 80
percent of the puzzle, they would be scratching their heads in, for lack of a better
word, puzzlement. Just as time was about to run out, one person—mind you,
almost without exception, it would be just one out of about 20 senior executives
—would realize that the puzzle could only be solved by turning some of the blue
puzzle pieces “upside down.”
In our day-to-day lives, we rarely even think to ask ourselves whether we
should turn over any proverbial puzzle pieces. As Harvard psychologist Chris
Argyris explains in his must-read book Increasing Leadership Effectiveness, when
something doesn’t go the way we want or expect, we typically assume that the
cause exists in our environment. Surely there was a screw-up in the puzzle
factory, or the missing pieces somehow got lost on their way out of the box. The
last place we look is at our own beliefs and actions. Together with his colleague
Donald Schön, Argyris labeled this type of thinking, one in which we fail to seek
data that confronts our fundamental assumptions of ourselves and the world,
“single-loop learning.”
In contrast, the process of double-loop learning involves confronting our
values and assumptions and, more importantly, inviting others to do so as well. In
his work with executives, Argyris discovered that double-loop learning can be
especially difficult for successful people who are used to “inventing, producing,
and achieving”—after all, they’ve gotten this far with their current assumptions,
so they must have gotten something right. But what they don’t often realize is just
how critical turning over the proverbial puzzle pieces is for their continued
success.
So how can we learn to do this? One approach is to get into the habit of
comparing our past predictions with actual outcomes. Celebrated
management professor Peter Drucker suggested a simple, practical process that
he himself used for more than 20 years. Every time he would make an important
decision, he would write down what he expected to happen. Then, when the
chickens had come home to roost, he would compare what actually happened
with what he had predicted.
But what if you want to identify your assumptions in real time rather than in
hindsight? Another tool comes from decision psychologist Gary Klein, who
suggests doing what he calls a pre-mortem by asking the following question:
“Imagine that we are a year into the future—we have implemented the plan as it
now exists. The outcome was a disaster. Write a brief history of that disaster.”
This process tends to reveal potential pitfalls in a way we’d rarely consider
otherwise. The same approach can be used for most big decisions, such as moving
to a new city, accepting a new job, or deciding to settle down with a romantic
partner. (And by the way, in appendix G, you can find a few questions to help
you unearth your assumptions and discover whether you might have some, as
Donald Rumsfeld might call them, “unknown unknowns” about yourself).
A second technique to minimize our blindspots is simply to keep learning,
especially in the areas where we think we already know a lot. In their landmark
1999 study, David Dunning and Justin Kruger found that when overconfident
poor performers were trained to improve their performance on a task, not only
did they improve, so did their awareness of their prior ineffectiveness. A true
commitment to ongoing learning—saying to ourselves, the more I think I know,
the more I need to learn—is a powerful way to combat knowledge blindness and
improve our effectiveness in the process.
Finally, we should seek feedback on our abilities and behaviors. Out of all
the tools we’ve reviewed so far, objective feedback has the best odds of helping
us see and overcome all three blindspots. Why? As we’ll discuss later, the people
around us can almost always see what we can’t. And as such, we need to surround
ourselves with those who will tell us the truth, both at work and at home. We need
colleagues, family members, and friends who will (lovingly) knock us down a peg
when we’re getting too big for our britches. In the category of “amusing yet
accurate observations,” Stanford researcher Hayagreeva Rao believes that leaders
who have teenage children are less prone to overconfidence for this very reason.
As anyone with a teenager knows, they are perpetually unimpressed and will
never hesitate to tell you how great you aren’t. (And it’s true that surrounding
yourself with people who disagree with you is one of the most fundamental
building blocks of leadership success. Great leaders have people around them
who call them out, and failed leaders almost never do.)
I’ll be the first to admit that seeking feedback can be one of the most
intimidating and terrifying things you’ll ever do. But trust me, the insight you will
gain will be worth it. Just ask our friend Steve. At the end of our first meeting, he
made a decision. Looking me in the eye, he bravely announced, “I don’t like this
information, but I accept it. And with your help, I’m going to figure it out.” It was
another huge step in the right direction.
At this point, Steve now had the will to make different choices, but he still
needed to develop the skill. So in the months that followed, I helped him share his
intentions, read his effect on his team, and seek feedback from people who would
tell him the truth. In one coaching session a month or so after our initial meeting,
Steve was still struggling to understand why everyone thought he was such a loose
cannon. So I tried a different approach: “Do you understand how you reacted
during our last meeting when I gave you the feedback from your team?” “Sure,”
he replied. “I don’t think you do,” I said, and then did my best impression of his
response—aggressively staring at him, raising my voice, and clenching my jaw—
so he could see just how hostile his behavior had been. “I don’t think I’ve always
been like this,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure I’ve been scaring my family just as
much as I’m scaring my team.” And now that he better understood how his
behavior was affecting others, he could begin to experiment with a different and
more effective approach.
This process went on for months. And like anyone undertaking such a task,
Steve had his fair share of setbacks, but he continued to make progress. In the
months that followed, he saw an improvement in his effectiveness and felt a new
level of confidence. Eventually, his team began to notice that something was
different—and so did his family. They all started to talk about this wonderful
person they called “the New Steve.” It was also not a coincidence that his team
met their aggressive business plan that year, or that his CEO started to trust his
abilities and decisions.
Steve’s tale illustrates both how incredibly hard it is to confront the reality
about ourselves and why it’s unquestionably worth the effort. When it comes to
making the choices that guide our lives, truth is power, whether that truth is
music to our ears or sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard. As Buddhist nun
Pema Chödrön points out, “The most fundamental…harm we can do to ourselves
is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at
ourselves honestly and gently.” And luckily, the difference between unicorns and
everyone else has less to do with innate ability and more to do with intention and
commitment. Throughout the rest of this book, we’ll discuss more strategies to
help us find the courage and respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently—and
in so doing, become more successful in our careers, more satisfied in our
relationships, and more content in our lives. But before we do that, it’s critical to
understand—and fight—the second big roadblock to self-awareness: something I
call the Cult of Self.
*1 It’s been shown that, in general, we become more accurate at self-assessing between the ages
of 25 and 35, but our accuracy tends to decrease between 35 and 45. Also, and quite
shockingly, business students, compared to students majoring in physical sciences, social
sciences, and the humanities, most strongly inflated their self-assessments relative to their
objective performance.
*2 This study was conducted in 1976—when Baby Boomers were in college—providing
evidence that Millennials were not the original instigators of this pattern! And I say this,
totally objectively, as a Millennial.
*3 For you statistics geeks, the correlation we’ve found between age and internal self-awareness
is only .16, and for external self-awareness, it’s .05.
*4 In his book on the subject, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman calls these processes
“thinking fast” and “thinking slow,” respectively.
*5 Which you can do at www.TashaEurich.com.
We have fallen in love with our own image, with images of our
making, which turn out to be images of ourselves.
—DANIEL J. BOORSTIN
International Falls, MN—The Dragons’ season came to a close as
Paycen’s pair of goals carried the Icemen to a 4–2 victory on
Saturday, with five goals scored during a wild second period. The
Icemen scored one minute into the second as right wing Loeden
lifted the puck over goaltender Keltie’s blocker. The Dragons tied
the game when Kaeden and Caiden set up a power-play goal. With
Jaxon in the penalty box after drawing Brecon’s blood with a high
stick to the nose, the Dragons were patient on the power play.
Kaeden fed the puck below the goal line to Caiden, who made a pass
to Constandino in the slot for an easy Dragon score.
Okay, so this is a completely made up recap of a hockey game. But the one
thing I didn’t make up were the player’s first names. If you didn’t notice them, go
back and take another look: Paycen, Keltie, Brecon, Jaxon, Constandino, and yes,
Kaeden and Caiden (what are the chances?). I lifted these strange and unusual
monikers from the real draft roster of the 2015 Western Hockey League, made
up of 68 American and Canadian high schoolers. The ones I didn’t even mention?
Kale (yes, like the vegetable), Lach, and four named Dawson (James Van Der
Beek would be touched).
So many bizarre names among a single group of hockey players might sound
like a simple, if odd, coincidence. But the Western Hockey League is not an
outlier. A 2012 Parents Magazine survey reveals that these days, parents are
choosing names like Blayde, Draven, Izander, Jaydien and Zaiden (for boys), and
Annyston, Brook’Lynn, Luxx, Sharpay, and Zerrika (for girls). And I’m sure
you’ve come across some doozies yourself.
In one of the largest studies to date on American naming trends, researchers
Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell analyzed the names given to more than 325
million babies born between 1880 and 2007. During the early twentieth century,
they found, parents consistently chose conventional names for their newborns. In
1890, 1900, 1910, and 1920, for example, the most common names were John
for boys and Mary for girls. In the decades that followed, parents continued to
stick with the classics like James, Michael, Mary, and Linda.
But beginning in the 1980s, Twenge and Campbell discovered a rather strange
pattern: fewer and fewer parents were going with the old standbys. Between 1983
and 2007, the percentage of U.S. parents who chose common names for their
children dropped sharply each and every year—most dramatically in the 1990s
and continuing to decline in the 2000s. Here’s a pretty telling data point: in 1880,
nearly 40 percent of boys and 25 percent of girls received one of the 10 most
popular names—but in 2010, that number dropped to less than 10 percent for
boys and 8 percent for girls. “Parents used to give their children common names,”
Twenge observes, “so they would fit in. Now, they give their child a unique [one
to] stand out and be a star.”
I don’t point this out to judge. Of course, parents can name their children
whatever they want (it’s a free country). I point this out because aside from being
interesting, this trend is a sign of an unstoppable phenomenon that’s sweeping our
world. And it’s a powerful roadblock to self-awareness.
Whether you know it or not, a powerful cult is trying to recruit you. Cults tend
to show a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing, and
this cult has chosen an irresistible figurehead: you! Frankly, it’s easy to see why
the promise that the Cult of Self makes can be too tempting to resist. It lulls us
into thinking that we are unique, special, and superior. That our needs matter
more than everyone else’s. That we’re not subject to the same rules as other
people are. That we’re deserving of things simply because we want them. No
wonder the Cult of Self has successfully recruited so many of our neighbors,
friends, and colleagues—perhaps it’s even succeeded in luring you. The last
chapter was about our internal roadblocks; in this chapter, we’ll discover this
insidious societal obstacle. Perhaps more importantly, we’ll learn several methods
for resisting its siren song—or breaking free if you’re already ensnared.
TURNING THE TIDE: FROM EFFORT TO ESTEEM
As many grouchy Baby Boomers will point out at the slightest provocation, things
weren’t always like this. In the broader timeline of human history, the Cult of Self
is a fairly recent phenomenon. For thousands of years, traditional Judeo-Christian
values emphasized modesty and humility—the polar opposites of the Cult of Self
—as measures of a well-lived life. In the eighteenth century, the United States
(which now boasts some of the Cult of Self’s most enthusiastic members) was
founded on the very principles of hard work, grit, and resilience. This Age of
Effort lasted hundreds of years, arguably peaking with the so-called Silent
Generation (born between 1900 and 1945) and the events of the early 20th
century—World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. The Age of
Effort fostered a collective mentality that shunned the glorification of the self.
But with the start of the self-esteem movement in the middle of the twentieth
century, the Age of Effort started to give way to the Age of Esteem. The seeds
were first sown with the humanistic psychology movement of the 1950s and
1960s. Carl Rogers, for instance, argued that humans could only achieve their
potential by seeing themselves with “unconditional positive regard.” Perhaps
more famously, Abraham Maslow proposed that humans have a hierarchy of
needs, at the top of which was self-actualization—that is, total happiness and
fulfillment. Yet by Maslow’s own admission, self-actualization was incredibly
difficult to achieve. Conveniently, self-esteem was just one rung down, and all
that was needed to achieve it was a change in mindset. In other words, we didn’t
need to become great; all we really had to do was feel great.
Not surprisingly, self-esteem began to catch on like wildfire. In 1969,
psychotherapist Nathaniel Branden published the international best-seller The
Psychology of Self-Esteem, in which he confidently concluded that self-esteem
had “profound consequences for every aspect of our existence” and that he
“couldn’t think of a single psychological problem—from anxiety to depression, to
fear of intimacy or of success, to spouse battery or child molestation—that is not
traceable to the problem of low self-esteem.” To say that Branden oversold his
thesis is like saying that Kim Kardashian feels pretty good about herself.
Though Nathaniel Branden is often seen as the father of self-esteem, a man
named John Vasconcellos took the movement to a whole new level. After he was
sworn in to the California State Assembly in 1966, the first move of the law
student turned politician with a childhood history of depression was to introduce
legislation for the California Task Force to Promote Self Esteem and Personal &
Social Responsibility—to the tune of an astounding taxpayer-funded $735,000
(roughly $1.7 million today).
The task force’s first order of business was to empirically establish that high
self-esteem reduced crime, drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, child and
spousal abuse, and welfare dependency. There was just one tiny, insignificant
issue: they couldn’t. In fact, the task force was forced to grudgingly admit in its
own report that “the associations between self-esteem and its expected
consequences are mixed, insignificant, or absent” and that there was no
relationship “between self-esteem and teenage pregnancy, self-esteem and child
abuse, self-esteem and most cases of alcohol and drug abuse.” Though no one
wanted to admit it, the idea that self-esteem predicted life success was, to put it
bluntly, a total and complete farce. Yet in a statement of stunning disregard for
the scientific method, Vasconcellos disavowed the task force’s findings, saying
“we all know in our gut that it is true.”
Enter psychologist Roy Baumeister, upon whom journalist Will Storr aptly
bestowed the title “the man who destroyed America’s ego.” Baumeister began
studying self-esteem early in his career and was initially one of the movement’s
biggest believers. Over time, however, his skepticism grew. He couldn’t
understand why people like Vasconcellos claimed that people with low selfesteem were violent and aggressive—his experience had been just the opposite.
But never one to rely on experience alone, Baumeister dug into the science, and
in 2003, he and his colleagues published an unequivocal indictment of almost
three decades—and over 15,000 studies—of self-esteem research.
Their review was chock-full of evidence that the relationship between selfesteem and success was virtually nonexistent. For example, military cadets’ selfesteem had no relationship with their objective performance as leaders. College
students’ self-esteem didn’t give them superior social skills. Professionals with
high self-esteem didn’t enjoy better relationships with their co-workers. And in
an even bigger blow to Nathaniel Brandon and his disciples, boosting the selfesteem of the unsuccessful hurt their performance rather than improved it.
Baumeister and his colleagues’ obvious conclusion was that self-esteem was
neither “a major predictor [n]or cause of almost anything,” least of all success
and personal fulfillment.
I haven’t even gotten to the really shocking part. Baumeister’s research revealed
an inconvenient truth that challenged the very assumptions upon which the entire
movement was built. Low self-esteem wasn’t actually an ailment from which most
Americans suffered in the first place. At the same time self-esteem proponents
were “bemoan[ing] the lack of self-love,” self-esteem levels were steadily and
almost uncontrollably rising. The real social ill was that most people felt too good
about themselves (often without any objective reason).
And it got worse. Baumeister’s review showed that people with high selfesteem were more violent and aggressive. When their romantic relationships were
in trouble, they were more likely to walk away, be unfaithful, or engage in other
destructive behaviors. They were also more likely to cheat, drink, and do drugs.
All of this was literally the opposite of what the California Task Force had been
arguing.
Though it’s been decades since Baumeister and his research team uncovered
the sham that is self-esteem, we can’t seem to shake our obsession with getting
more of it. Why? The bottom line, I believe, is that it’s far easier to feel
wonderful and special than to become wonderful and special. And just like in
Garrison Keillor’s fictional town of Lake Wobegon, we continue to spoon-feed
our children the idea that they are just that.
In the northwest of England, at the confluence of two ancient rivers, lies the
enchanted town of Barrowford. In the seventeenth century, the area was known as
a center of witchcraft, with 10 of the so-called “Pendle Witches” having been
hanged there on a warm summer day in 1612. But today in its verdant hills,
valleys, and winding cobblestone streets, another strange magic is afoot.
To the average visitor, Barrowford might look like an ordinary, if quaint,
bedroom community dotted with upscale restaurants and antique stores. Little
would they know that Barrowford boasts a very interesting feature: it’s the town
where children are never naughty. Don’t believe me? Then how do you explain
Barrowford Primary School, where the head teacher, Rachel Tomlinson, insists
that there is no such thing as a bad child? Each one of her 350 students is, she
says, “special and unique.” For that very reason, teachers don’t raise their voices
or provide discipline of any kind. Punishment, says Tomlinson, only “robs the
victim and the perpetrator of the things they need.” Instead, apparently all that’s
needed to get the best out of these boys and girls is to remind them of their
specialness—unconditionally and often.
But if, on the rare occasion that the magical praise-spell breaks and a child
does misbehave, teachers are given but one method of recourse. They are
permitted to send the child to another classroom, at which point they may only
point out, “You know I think you’re wonderful, but your mistaken behavior shows
me that it would be best for you to have some time here, where these children can
help you to stop making that mistake.” Rather amusingly, the teachers’ sole
nuclear option is to tell them (ostensibly with a straight face), “you have emptied
my resilience bucket.”
*1
The children of Barrowford Primary are given this unconditional praise
regardless of how they perform in the classroom, with Tomlinson’s pupils telling
a team of visiting inspectors that “no one minds that we don’t do our best work.”
One year, when students received their Key Stage 2 standardized test results, the
school sent them home with a letter explaining that academic evaluations can’t
possibly measure all of their special and wonderful qualities and that regardless of
their scores, Tomlinson was proud that they had all “tried their best during a
tricky week.”
And such self-esteem stoking hasn’t created a miracle of high achievement any
more than hanging those poor women in 1612 rid the town of witches. In fact, in
September of 2015, the school was handed the worst rating possible, deemed
“inadequate” by British government inspectors. Other experts have labeled
Barrowford’s educational philosophy a “fantasy.” Tomlinson’s response to the
criticism was priceless in its delusion: though she was disappointed, she was also
“very positive and excited about the future.”
Barrowford’s misguided approach was designed to produce an army of children
whose self-esteem is preserved at all costs. And again, in this the school is not
alone. We’ve all heard the examples: sports teams where everyone is a winner,
like one branch of the American Youth Soccer Organization that hands out
roughly 3,500 awards each season (this works out to at least one award per
player). Others prevent students from losing altogether, like the schools in the
U.S. and Europe that banned all competitive sports. There are the elementary
schools where failing grades and red pens have been outlawed because they’re too
“negative,” or where students spend time working on daily “I Love Me” lessons.
The high schools with 30 valedictorians who ship their students off to colleges
where grade inflation is an ever-increasing problem.
This gingerly treatment of young egos is even alive and well in America’s most
prestigious and selective institutions. For example, in 2001, a whopping 91
percent of Harvard students graduated with honors, and in 2013, at least half of
all grades awarded were A’s. But in 2015, 72 percent of students polled didn’t
think that grade inflation was a problem. As the proud sister of a Yale graduate, I
found myself especially relishing this story, until I learned that Yale has
experienced similar problems: a 2012 ad hoc committee on grading found that 62
percent of all grades given were an A or A–, versus just 10 percent in 1963.
Entertainingly, many Yale students and faculty believed this pattern was simply
the result of “a more consistently excellent student body.”
This is all evidence of a sweeping problem I call the Feel Good Effect, though
its consequences are far more pernicious than the cheery name suggests. In the
workplace, for example, the best-case scenario is that people who see themselves
as special and amazing annoy those who have to work with them. In the worst
case, they are woefully ill-equipped to deal with the tiniest bit of criticism,
crushed in the face of the smallest screw-up, and devastated by the minor
setbacks on the path to their predestined greatness. Comedian George Carlin has
a great bit about this. “No child these days,” he says, “gets to hear these all
important character building words: ‘You lost, Bobby. You’re a loser, Bobby.’
They become used to these kid gloves and never hear the truth about themselves
until they’re in their twenties, when their boss calls them in and says, ‘Bobby clean
the s*** out of your desk and get the f*** out of here, you’re a loser!’ ”
This is equal parts hilarious and harsh, but Carlin makes a truly excellent point.
In the real world, not everyone gets to graduate with honors—and in fact, the
more delusional we are about our skills and abilities, the less likely we are to
succeed. Take one study, which found that when college freshmen were
overconfident about their academic abilities, they also had poorer well-being and
lower engagement in their schoolwork throughout their college experience than
students who were more realistic.
The Feel Good Effect also hurts our relationships. In one of the most
comprehensive studies of its costs to date, researchers assessed 100 college
students’ views of their personalities, comparing their self-ratings with trained
psychologists’ ratings of them. The psychologists viewed young men with
accurate self-perceptions as honest and smart. However, for those young men
who gave themselves unrealistically positive ratings, the psychologists described
them as “guileful and deceitful, distrustful of people and having a brittle egodefense system.” Similarly, young women who were accurate were seen as
“complex, interesting, and intelligent,” and those whose self-images were
unrealistically positive were seen as “defensive” and “thin-skinned.” And it wasn’t
just trained psychologists who saw differences between the delusional and the
aware. When asked to evaluate the overconfident, even their own friends thought
they were “condescending,” “hostile,” and “self-defeating.” The realists, on the
other hand, were seen as “charming” and “poised.”
By blinding us to the truth about our skills and abilities, the Feel Good Effect
even causes us to make life choices which, as good as they may feel in the
moment, can really hurt us in the long run. Take the classic reality-TV cliché: a
young pre-med student skips her final exams to drive 10 hours to audition for the
reality singing competition du jour. Yet rather inconveniently, she’s also a
horrible singer and never makes it past the first round. Here, the choice that
resulted from her overconfidence got in the way of her far sounder future plans.
But what if you’re not delusional but merely positive—the kind of person who
sees the world through rose-colored glasses? An optimistic temperament predicts
persistence, so it’s not surprising that entrepreneurs and founders tend to be more
optimistic than the average professional. But when optimism is unfounded, those
rose-colored glasses can really obscure insight. The odds, for example, that a
small business will survive for five years after being founded are 35 percent. But
81 percent of entrepreneurs believe that their odds of success are 70 percent or
more, and an incredible 33 percent see their chances as “dead certain.”
And alas, such unwarranted optimism persists even in the face of cold, hard
truths. Management professors Thomas Åstebro and Samir Elhedhli reviewed
data collected by the Canadian Innovation Centre, a non-profit that helps
entrepreneurs bring their ideas to market. The program evaluates new business
plans and subsequently assigns companies a grade from A to F; on average, and
more or less consistent with real-world failure rates, 70 percent are given a D or
F. But almost half of these entrepreneurs persisted anyway. Many even doubled
their efforts, wrongly thinking that hard work could improve the viability of their
unviable business. In literally every case, it didn’t.
We’ve now seen that willful blindness to our shortcomings can set us up for
failure. And yet the self-awareness unicorns in our study showed a remarkable
pattern: in a few specific situations, they strategically put on their rose-colored
glasses, and it provided them with tangible benefits. To quote one such unicorn, a
brilliant project manager who recently dealt with a devastating medical diagnosis,
“You can visit denial-ville, but you can’t build a house there.”
*2 She told us that
when she found out she was sick, she needed a few days of blissful ignorance to
store up the energy to face her new reality. But then she picked herself up, dusted
herself off, and bravely and realistically began her fight.
How do we know when to put our glasses on and when they should come off?
A good rule of thumb is that when we need to bounce back from constant
challenges, or where we can succeed through sheer persistence, the FeelGood Effect can be helpful. This is especially true in professions like acting,
where rejection is part of the job description. It can also be true in the “publish or
perish” world of science. As Daniel Kahneman notes, “I believe that someone
who lacks a delusional sense of significance will wilt in the face of repeated
experiences of multiple small failures and rare successes, the fate of most
researchers.” But there is one hugely important caveat: before you put on your
rose-colored glasses and head down the path of persistence, make sure that your
path actually leads somewhere. If, to use the above example, you’re simply a
terrible actor, no amount of persistence will get you to the Broadway stage. You
have to read the signs that your path could be a dead end and be ready to change
course if you’re not getting anywhere.
There is one last type of situation where temporarily donning our rose-colored
glasses can be a good idea. I was giving a self-awareness workshop to a group of
professionals when I met Katie, a shy, bespectacled accountant who spent the
entire class solemnly taking notes. At the end of the session, though, she seemed
reluctant to commit to putting the feedback-gathering techniques she’d learned
into practice. I sensed there was more going on, so I approached her after class. I
learned that Katie was a partner at a professional services firm, and that the last
month had been excruciating. Her firm had just brought in a new partner who
seemed dead set at undermining her. Katie had also just been appointed as trustee
of her parents’ estate in the midst of an all-out family war. Quite simply, with all
the things going on in her life, Katie didn’t have the bandwidth to focus on selfimprovement—she was just trying to get through this crisis and emerge
unscathed.
Sometimes life can hand us challenges so difficult that we need rose-colored
glasses to help us get through them. Our unicorns echoed this sentiment: one put
his self-awareness journey on pause when he was unexpectedly fired. Another
found her divorce so devastating that some strategic blissful ignorance got her
through the worst parts. But if our unicorns indulged in a little self-delusion from
time to time, it was only temporary. When they were ready, they bravely faced
the music and resumed their self-awareness journey.
As a final point, it’s worth noting that there’s a fine line between feeling good
and willfully ignoring the signals around us. Even though there are a few
situations where keeping our rose-colored glasses on is the best option, most
others—especially things like a new job, a big promotion, a company turnaround,
a merger or acquisition, a blow-out fight with a loved one—require you to take
them off no matter what. Where failure is not an option, you don’t have the
luxury of blissful ignorance. Unfortunately, as you’re about to read, there is an
epidemic afoot that is threatening to further throw that delicate balance to the
wind.
ME, MY SELFIE, AND I
It was the most perfect start to a morning I could remember. After I’d worked six
months straight without a break, my husband had surprised me with a birthday
trip to Hawaii. Our busy schedules only permitted us three days away, but as we
settled into our rented cabana with our freshly prepared omelets, we felt like we’d
booked into paradise forever. The sky was clear, the warm sun was enveloping us,
and the sweet scent of gardenia mixed with the salty smell of the ocean. We had
nothing to do but sit and enjoy the perfectly unobstructed vista of blue sea rolling
onto white sand.
I was smiling at my husband, who was basking in his quickly accumulating
spousal brownie points, when suddenly a shadow fell over us. That’s strange, I
thought, there weren’t any clouds a moment ago. Before I had the chance to squint
at the sky, I heard a shriek and a giggle. An attractive young couple in their early
twenties had come to a halt right in front of us. We said nothing as they laid out
their towels right in the middle of the view we’d been so peacefully enjoying. As
they pulled off their shorts and T-shirts, revealing toned, tanned bodies clad in
designer swimwear, I shook my head in minor irritation as little kicks of sand
landed in my omelet.
After blankly staring at the ocean for a few minutes, the young woman jumped
up. Apparently, it was now time to commence an activity with which you may be
familiar: Beach Selfies. My husband and I didn’t try very hard to mask our
chuckling as she dramatically flipped her hair, pushed her sunglasses to the tip of
her nose, and pursed her lips into the all-too-familiar Duck Face.
Then things crossed the line from amusing to annoying. With her hips back and
her chest forward, she pranced and posed, squinting at her screen every 30
seconds to review the shots. “She’s got to stop soon,” I whispered to my husband,
attempting to skim the sand from my breakfast. “Five minutes.” “Ten,” he
predicted. We were both wrong. When she finally finished—a full 15 minutes
later—she sat back down as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, lay
back on her towel, and went to sleep, completely oblivious to the open-mouthed
stares from everyone in her general vicinity.
Beach Selfie Girl’s behavior is hardly unique, and this episode is just one
example of the exponential momentum that the Cult of Self has gained with the
explosion of social media. One of our unicorns described a friend who routinely
takes 40 to 50 selfies a day; once, when they were out to dinner, the friend spent
the entire meal snapping photos of himself. At one point, he excused himself to
go to the restroom—where he took even more selfies and posted them on
Instagram, all before returning to the table.
We all know someone who suffers from Selfie Syndrome. Symptoms include a
once-unthinkable level of self-absorption, resulting in delusions including (but not
limited to) the belief that people care what you ate for breakfast, that today is
your child’s half-birthday, or that you are having the best vacation ever. It might
even be fair to say that in many respects, for many people, Selfie Syndrome has
crossed the line into a kind of widespread, low-grade narcissism. Certainly,
almost all of us have encountered full-fledged narcissists in our personal or
professional lives. You know, those people who are so convinced they’re the
center of the universe that they can’t seem to see past themselves to the people
around them.
But what we don’t always realize is that paradoxically, an intense self-focus
not only obscures our vision of those around us; it distorts our ability to see
ourselves for what we really are. Indeed, research has shown that in general,
there is an inverse relationship between how special we feel and how self-aware
we are. One need not look far to find examples: the people who post the most
selfies on Facebook, for instance, seem to have the least awareness of how
annoying this behavior is to the rest of us.
When we examine the “impersonally personal” nature of social media, the idea
of narcissism running rampant makes sense. In most online communication, we
don’t see the other person’s reactions or facial expressions, which makes it easier
to be detached, self-centered, and unreflective. Researchers call this the “moral
shallowing hypothesis,” where our ultra-brief online interactions lead to rapid,
superficial thought, which makes us see ourselves, and others, in a more shallow
manner.
Of course, this isn’t to say that anyone who takes selfies or uses social media is
a narcissist. But scientifically, there is no question that these things are related,
and there is ample evidence that narcissism is on the rise. For example, in a study
of tens of thousands of U.S. college students, Jean Twenge and her colleagues
found that between the mid-1980s and 2006, narcissism increased a full 30
percent, as measured by statements like “If I ruled the world it would be a better
place,” “I always know what I’m doing,” and “I will never be satisfied until I get
all that I deserve.”
And lest you pin this trend entirely on Millennials, it’s not just those of us born
between 1980 and 1999 who show this pattern. Another long-running study that
analyzed high schoolers’ responses to the question “I am an important person”
found that in the 1950s only 12 percent agreed, but by 1989 (that is, when Gen
Xers were in high school), that number jumped to roughly 80 percent. And
remember the study from the last chapter, where 25 percent of high-school-aged
Baby Boomers put themselves in the top 1 percent in their ability to get along
with others?
Selfie Syndrome isn’t a generational phenomenon, nor is it confined to the
arguably more self-centered cohort of adolescents. Our growing “me” focus can
be found everywhere from contemporary literature to social media, even in the
Oval Office. One study that analyzed State of the Union addresses between 1790
and 2012 found a decrease in the use of other-related words like his/her and
neighbor, and an increase in self-focused words such as I, me, and mine. Similarly,
my own Google Ngram
*3
search of more than 15 million books revealed that
while the use of the word me decreased nearly 50 percent between 1900 and
1974, it increased more than 87 percent between 1975 and 2008!
Right now, you’re probably thinking of a particularly narcissistic Facebook
friend or self-absorbed celebrity. But I encourage you to also ask how you use
social media—whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, or
anything else that’s been invented since this book was published. Ask yourself:
When you post a picture of your perfect vacation, what’s going through your
head? What image of yourself are you trying to project? What are you hoping to
achieve? Few of us think about our social media habits in such rational or
analytic terms. In fact, they usually feel so natural that we don’t think about them,
which is precisely the problem.
This suggests a bigger question: Why do we use social media in the first place?
Even though social media is supposed to be social, one 2015 study found that
maintaining our relationships can often be the last reason we use these platforms.
At the top of the list is sharing information about ourselves, which is often called
self-presentation. Now, on its own, self-presentation isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
But an interesting pattern has emerged suggesting that as self-presentation
increases, empathy decreases. Since the year 2000, right around the time when
sites like MySpace, Friendster, and other precursors to Facebook exploded,
people started becoming less empathetic and more self-centered. Research shows
that compared to college students in the early 1980s, today’s pupils are 11 percent
less likely to agree with statements like “I often have tender, concerned feelings
for people less fortunate than me” and “I sometimes try to understand my friends
better by imagining how things look from their perspective.”
At this point you might be wondering whether this is a chicken-or-egg
situation. How can we conclude that social media is causing narcissism? Isn’t it
just as likely that narcissistic, un-self-aware people are simply more likely to use
social media? These are important questions, and there’s actually evidence that
both are true. Let’s start with the second question: Do narcissists use social media
more? Studies from both Western and Eastern cultures show that narcissists
indeed use social media as an outlet for their inflated self-views, spending more
time posting self-promotional content like selfies.
Let’s now go back to the first question—is social media actually causing our
self-absorption? Here, there is also supportive evidence. One study randomly
assigned participants into one of two groups, who each spent 35 minutes online.
The first group spent time editing their MySpace pages (really takes you back,
doesn’t it?) while the other plotted the route they took to school on Google Maps.
When researchers measured narcissism levels in each group, participants who had
spent time on MySpace scored significantly higher, suggesting not only that social
media does increase narcissism, but that it has a virtually immediate impact.
Of course, people who love selfies and unique baby names usually fall short of
being diagnosable narcissists—a personality disorder characterized by an
exaggerated sense of self-importance, a need for power and admiration, and a
failure to recognize the needs of others. Research shows that narcissists tend to
have brief but intense friendships and romances that end once the other person
sees their true nature. They feel entitled to things they haven’t earned and are
unable to tolerate criticism.
In the work world, while narcissistic leaders can be confident setting a clear
vision, they tend to overrate their performance, dominate decision processes, seek
excessive recognition, show less empathy, and are more likely to behave
unethically. And while they think quite highly of their leadership abilities, they
are actually rated lowest in effectiveness by their teams. Narcissistic CEOs in
particular have been found to be less responsive to objective performance
feedback than non-narcissistic ones, often with devastating effects. In a
fascinating study, when researchers Charles Ham and his colleagues measured the
size of CEO signatures in SEC filings in S&P 500 firms (with a sizable signature
being an indicator of narcissism), they found that the larger a CEO’s signature,
the worse the company performed on a number of indicators (lower patent counts
and citations, poorer return on assets, over-investment, lower future revenues and
sales growth).
In additional to its social and professional consequences, even low-level (i.e.,
non-diagnosable) narcissism can chip away at our self-confidence. Think about
the version of yourself that you present online. If you’re like most people, you
might present an airbrushed, “hoped-for” version that gives an overly favorable
impression of your life. These effects have been documented everywhere from
Facebook status updates to dating profiles to the Twitter feeds of congresspeople
during election years. For instance, we tend to use fewer negative words in social
media than in other forms of communication, and half of status updates are
posted with the goal of creating a favorable impression.
Paradoxically, this incessant promotion of our hoped-for self can be egocrushing, especially when the “actual” and “hoped for” versions don’t match up
(“my Paris vacation photos sure look perfect, but what no one knows is that my
husband and I spent the whole vacation fighting and I think I might want a
divorce”). When we’re trying so hard to convince everyone how successful or
happy or attractive we are, not only are we often not fooling anyone; we’re
reminding ourselves of how unsuccessful or unhappy or unattractive we really
feel.
To see how damaging social media self-inflations can be for our self-image,
let’s examine the case of 18-year-old Australian model Essena O’Neil. She
recently became something of a poster child for the Cult of Self resistance
movement when she shocked her millions of Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and
Snapchat followers by announcing that she was shutting down her social media
profiles. O’Neil told her fans that she’d spent most of her life addicted to the
exposure, approval, and status that her followers gave her, and her endless pursuit
of others’ adoration had actually taken an enormous toll on her self-confidence.
The more she posted, the more obsessed she became with perfection, and, in turn,
the more frustrated she became when she never attained that ideal: “I spent hours
watching perfect girls online, wishing I was them. Then when I was ‘one of them’
I still wasn’t happy, content or at peace with myself.”
O’Neil has since launched a website called “Let’s be Game Changers,” where
she curates resources to expose what she calls the “fakeness” of social media. At
the time of writing, O’Neil’s website doesn’t have a single photo of the model, and
only a short blurb about her, which is entitled “Me?” Sometimes the people who
break with the Cult of Self are those we least expect. Let’s talk about how we all
can do it.
FROM SELF-ABSORPTION TO SELF-AWARENESS: RESISTING
THE CULT OF SELF
It may not surprise you, given what you read in the last chapter, that most of us
don’t think we’re narcissistic. The good news is that only 4 percent of the
population actually fits the diagnostic criteria; the bad news is that the remaining
96 percent of us can display some narcissistic behaviors, at least some percentage
of the time. Since this book is all about making the brave decision to confront the
truth about ourselves, I’ve included an assessment in appendix H to help you
gauge how many such behaviors you currently exhibit. But no matter what your
score, if you want to move away from self-absorption and toward self-awareness,
it’s worth examining the following three strategies: becoming an informer,
cultivating humility, and practicing self-acceptance.
As you go about your daily life, how much time and energy do you spend
focused on you? It’s probably more than you think. One study found that we
spend up to 60 percent of our talking time discussing ourselves, and when we’re
on social media that number jumps to a whopping 80 percent. But our unicorns
are different. Overwhelmingly, their conversations (online and offline) focus
more on others—friends, co-workers, the events taking place in the wider world,
etc. One appropriately noted that “the world doesn’t revolve around me.” Another
explained that his approach to interacting with others involves “being curious
about something outside of myself.”
But is focusing on other people even possible when most forms of social media
seem to exist for the sole purpose of self-promotion? Let’s start by looking at the
big picture. Researchers have discovered that people who use social media
generally fall into one of two categories: 80 percent are so-called “Meformers,”
who like to post messages that are all about telling everyone about what is going
on with them. The remaining 20 percent are “Informers,” who tend to post nonself-related information—helpful articles, amusing observations, funny videos,
etc. Informers tend to have more friends and enjoy richer, more satisfying
interactions than Meformers.
It might not come as a surprise that our unicorns, to a person, were Informers.
But when I began drilling down into this topic, I was shocked to learn that they
also spent more time (almost 20 percent more) on social media than non-unicorns.
They just spent that time very differently. Instead of logging on and posting a
selfie, an update about their upcoming vacation, or their latest professional
achievement, they used social media as a way to truly engage and stay connected
with others. One unicorn, an entrepreneur in her fifties, told us: “Social media
allows me to see what people I care about are up to. I don’t post on Facebook
often, but I do try to share something uplifting or funny or different a few times a
week. If I post a picture, it’s more likely to be an eagle in a tree or a sunset.
Something beautiful that I can share with others.” Like other unicorns, her social
media goals aren’t to rack up “likes,” but rather to inform, entertain, and inspire.
As another unicorn, a manager in his mid-forties, put it, “sometimes the Kanye
Wests of the world need public validation that ‘yes, you’re great.’ I don’t find
myself needing that.”
The message here is clear: to move from self-absorption to self-awareness, try
being an Informer—that is, focusing less on you and more on engaging and
connecting with others. For the next 24 hours, then, my challenge to you is to pay
attention to how much you talk about yourself versus how much you focus on
others—both online and offline. When tempted with a “Meformer”
conversational topic or post, ask yourself: “What am I hoping to accomplish by
doing this?” Be warned, this won’t be easy at first. Since I began working on this
book, I’ve used this technique and been surprised at how strong the pull toward
self-absorption can be. It has unmasked a lot of behaviors that I was previously
unaware of. I have since made an effort to change the way I’m showing up,
especially online. When you try this exercise for a few days, I’d bet money that
you’ll discover something that will surprise you.
Focusing on others, however, won’t help us fight the Cult of Self on its own.
We also need to take a more realistic view of our own qualities, or in other words,
cultivate humility. Because it means appreciating our weaknesses and keeping
our successes in perspective, humility is a key ingredient of self-awareness.
When she was a little girl, Angela Ahrendts dreamed of being a fashion
designer. She’d spend hours gazing at the gorgeous photos in her mother’s
magazines and sewing her own clothes. When she entered college, the place
where her youthful dreams were supposed to turn into realities, she began to
wonder why the other fashion design students seemed so much more talented
than she was. One day, a professor took her aside and gave her some advice that,
while well intentioned, must have been difficult to hear. The kind of person who
can talk about fashion but isn’t able to produce it? “We call that,” he told her, “a
merchant.”
It’s probably fair to say that most ambitious students, upon being told they’re
simply not good enough to fulfill their dreams, would disappear down a whirlpool
of self-delusion. “What does my professor know, anyway?” we’d demand of
anyone within earshot. “She’s always had it in for me.” But not Ahrendts.
Growing up as one of six children in New Palestine, Indiana, she was taught to
work hard and remain humble. As a result, she had the self-awareness to realize
the professor was giving her great advice.
And she took it. She became a clothing merchant. By 2006, Ahrendts had
become CEO of Burberry. She transformed the luxury brand’s design and retail
and digital presence and, in doing so, orchestrated an impressive company
turnaround in the midst of a global recession. Along the way, she racked up a
boast-worthy slew of honors, having landed on Forbes’ Most Powerful Women
list four times in five years, being named one of Fortune’s Businesspeople of the
Year, and receiving the Outstanding Leadership Award from Oracle, to name a
few.
But it isn’t Ahrendts’ style to boast about these achievements. And when Apple
CEO Tim Cook was interviewing her for the role of SVP of Apple’s online and
retail businesses, she made a point of stressing to him that she was neither a
technical guru nor someone with any experience in the world of consumer
electronics. Yet Cook knew he didn’t need a tech wiz or a retail expert to turn
around Apple’s struggling retail division. What he needed was a team player; a
selfless leader who could engage and inspire.
So what did Angela Ahrendts’ first few months in her new role look like?
Where a more self-absorbed leader might have tried to make a splash with an
aggressive vision that may or may not have been the right decision for the
company, Ahrendts embarked on a tour of more than 100 stores, call centers, and
back offices with one simple aim: to listen. Her next step was to begin sending
weekly personal messages to her 60,000 retail employees—not with the goal of
telling them about herself or her plan for the division, but rather to get them more
involved in the decisions that affected their world. Ahrendts helped her
employees see themselves as “executives…who are touching customers with the
products that [Apple] took years to build.”
Her surprising lack of ego and inclusive leadership style have confused some
members of the press, prompting Jennifer Reingold of Fortune to ask, “What the
heck is Angela Ahrendts doing at Apple?” But her results speak for themselves.
Financially, 2015 marked the company’s most successful year ever, with revenue
expanding 28 percent to $234 billion while her employee retention skyrocketed to
81 percent—Apple’s highest figure ever recorded. Oh, and she is now the most
highly paid employee in one of the planet’s most iconic and valuable companies,
with an estimated annual package worth more than $25 million.
There is no question that humble people like Angela Ahrendts are objectively
more successful, in part because their focus on other people makes them more
liked and respected. Because they work hard and don’t take things for granted.
Because they admit when they don’t have the answers. Because they are willing to
learn from others versus stubbornly clinging to their views. As a result, people on
teams with humble leaders are more engaged, more satisfied with their jobs, and
less likely to leave. This is true particularly for senior leaders, where narcissism is
especially dangerous if they cannot learn to temper it.
Yet the virtue of humility is often the exception rather than the rule in our Cult
of Self society—both in the world of business and outside it. I see three reasons
for the sad state of affairs. First, people often confuse humility with low selfworth, and thus label it as undesirable, even though the opposite is true—because
it means appreciating our weaknesses and keeping our successes in perspective,
humility is actually a necessary ingredient for self-awareness. The second reason
humility is in short supply is that to gain it, we must tame the powerful beast at
the epicenter of the Cult of Self: our ego. Finally, humility requires accepting a
certain degree of imperfection, and most goal-oriented, Type A people rarely
give themselves the permission to do so. (For a quick assessment to determine
your level of humility, take a look at appendix I.)
But does humility mean that we should hate ourselves for our inevitable faults?
Or that we should constantly harp on our weaknesses to avoid getting a big head?
Thankfully, the alternative to boundless self-esteem doesn’t have to be selfloathing but rather self-acceptance—our third approach to fighting the Cult of
Self. Where self-esteem means thinking you’re amazing regardless of the
objective reality, self-acceptance (also called self-compassion by some
researchers) means understanding our objective reality and choosing to like
ourselves anyway. So instead of trying to be perfect—or delusionally believing
they are—self-accepting people understand and forgive themselves for their
imperfections.
Encouragingly, self-acceptance delivers all of the advertised benefits of selfesteem with few of the costs. Though the two are identical predictors of
happiness and optimism, only people high in self-acceptance hold positive views
of themselves that aren’t dependent on external validation (that is, they don’t need
excessive praise, or hundreds of Facebook “likes,” or metaphorical gold stars to
feel good about themselves and their contributions).
And self-acceptance isn’t just a good idea in theory—it has very real benefits
for our success and well-being. In one study, Kristin Kneff and her colleagues
asked job-market-bound undergraduates to participate in a mock interview for a
job they “really, really want[ed].” When the interviewer asked the students to
describe their greatest weakness, those high in self-acceptance reported feeling
significantly less nervous and self-conscious afterward—had it been an actual job
interview, they likely would have performed much better as a result.
So how can you increase your self-acceptance? One step you can take is to
better monitor your inner monologue. Organizational psychologist Steven
Rogelberg and his colleagues showed how helpful self-accepting self-talk can be
in a study of senior executives attending a weeklong leadership program. At the
end of the week, each participant wrote a letter to their future self about the
lessons they learned and the changes they wanted to make. The researchers coded
each letter as either self-accepting (which they called “constructive”) or selfcritical. The executives who used self-accepting language were more effective
and less stressed than the self-critical ones (and fascinatingly, the self-critical
leaders were also less creative).
We’ll revisit this idea in the next chapter when we talk about recognizing and
stopping rumination, but for now, especially if you’re feeling bad about yourself
—guilty, fearful, upset, unable to cope—take notice of whether you’re being selfcritical (“There I go forgetting to set my alarm! What is wrong with me? Why
can’t I do the most basic things, like be on time?”) or self-accepting (“That was a
mistake—but I’m only human and these things happen”). A helpful question to
ask can sometimes be, “Would I say what I just said to myself to someone whom
I like and respect?”
*4
Making the decision to humbly but compassionately accept ourselves takes
courage. As one of our unicorns, an architect by training who is now a global
technology director, explains, “The problem is not being aware of yourself but
loving the person you find out you are.” Can this process be uncomfortable?
Sometimes. But often, discomfort means you’re making progress. Another
unicorn, a mid-career marketing manager for a consumer products company, put
it this way: “The more committed you are to building self-awareness, the more
empathy and grace you learn to extend to yourself.”
There are few better examples of humility and self-acceptance than unicorn
George Washington’s farewell address, arguably one of the most revered
presidential speeches in modern history. As he is saying goodbye to the country
he helped build in the twilight of his life, he notes that “I am unconscious of
intentional error, [but] I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it
probable that I may have committed many.” He goes on to ask American citizens
to extend him the same grace he’s giving to himself: “I shall also carry with me
the hope that my country will never cease to view [them] with indulgence and
that…the faults of my incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as
myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.”
We’ve now explored the often unseen obstacles to self-insight—both the
blindspots that keep us from seeing ourselves clearly and the social forces that
feed the beast of delusion. Now we can start learning to improve it. As you’re
about to learn, this requires us to abandon many of our preexisting notions about
what it really means to be self-aware. So in the coming chapter, we’ll debunk
some of the most common follies and misconceptions about internal selfawareness and learn what we should do instead.
*1 Journalist Allison Pearson delightfully imagines what would have transpired if such a
philosophy were applied in Britain’s diplomatic relations circa World War II:
*2 Throughout the book, unicorn quotes appear near-verbatim; I’ve made some small changes to
improve readability without altering their meaning.
*3 Google Ngram is web-based search engine that tracks the frequencies of words and phrases
found in books printed between 1500 and 2008 in eight languages.
*4 If you’re interested in learning more methods of increasing your self-acceptance, I strongly
encourage you to visit Kristin Kneff’s website: http://self-compassion.org/category/exercises/.

Why should we not calmly and patiently review our own thoughts, and
thoroughly examine and see what these appearances in us really are?
—PLATO
It was a Tuesday evening around 11 p.m. Holed up in my dark office and lit only
by the glare of my computer monitor, I sat staring at a set of freshly analyzed
data. To say that I was perplexed would be an understatement. A few weeks
earlier, my team and I had run a study looking at the relationship between selfreflection and outcomes like happiness, stress, and job satisfaction. I was
confident that the results would yield few surprises. Naturally, people who spent
time and energy examining themselves would have a clearer understanding of
themselves.
But to my utter astonishment, our data told the exact opposite story. (In fact,
when I first saw them, I thought we’d done the analyses wrong.) The results
revealed that people who scored high on self-reflection were more stressed,
depressed, and anxious, less satisfied with their jobs and relationships, more selfabsorbed, and felt less in control of their lives—and to boot, these negative
consequences increased the more they reflected! What on earth was going on!?
Though I didn’t know it at the time, I’d just stumbled upon a shocking myth
about self-awareness—one that researchers were only beginning to understand. A
few years earlier, when University of Sydney coaching psychologist Anthony
Grant was examining the same phenomenon, he discovered that people who
possess greater insight—which he defines as an intuitive understanding of
ourselves—enjoy stronger relationships, a clearer sense of purpose, and greater
well-being, self-acceptance, and happiness. Other similar studies have shown that
people high in insight feel more in control of their lives, show more dramatic
personal growth, enjoy better relationships, and feel calmer and more content. So
far so good, right?
But Grant also found that there was no relationship between introspection and
insight. The act of thinking about ourselves wasn’t correlated with knowing
ourselves. In fact, in a few cases, he found the opposite: the more time the
participants spent in introspection, the less self-knowledge they had (yes, you read
that right). In other words, we can spend endless amounts of time in selfreflection but emerge with no more self-insight than when we started.
This capacity for self-examination is uniquely human. Though chimpanzees,
dolphins, elephants, and even pigeons can recognize their images in a mirror,
human beings are the only species with the capacity for introspection—that is,
the ability to consciously examine our thoughts, feelings, motives, and
behaviors.
*1 For thousands of years, introspection was seen as a beneficial,
error-free activity. In the seventeenth century, for instance, philosopher Rene
Descartes argued that the only knowledge of any value emerged from examining
ourselves. In the early twentieth century, pioneering psychologist Wilhelm Wundt
used introspection as a central component of his research on perception and
consciousness. And in a more modern albeit less scientific example, a posttakeout-dinner fortune cookie recently advised me: “Turn your thoughts within.
Find yourself.”
Fortune-cookie wisdom aside, introspection is arguably the most universally
hailed path to self-awareness—or at least internal self-awareness, which is the
focus of this chapter. After all, what better way is there to increase our selfknowledge than to look inward; to delve deeply into our experiences and
emotions; to understand why we are the way we are? We might be trying to
understand our feelings (Why am I so upset after that meeting?), questioning our
beliefs (Do I really believe what I think I believe?), figuring out our future (What
career would make me truly happy?), or trying to explain a negative outcome or
pattern (Why do I beat myself up so much for minor mistakes?).
But my study results—along with Grant’s and others—clearly show that this
kind of self-reflection doesn’t help us become more self-aware. And when I
decided to dive head-first into the literature on introspection, I learned that what
I’d uncovered was just the tip of the iceberg. One study, for example, examined
the coping style and subsequent adjustment of men who had just lost a partner to
AIDS. Those who engaged in introspection (such as reflecting on how they would
deal with life without their partner) had higher morale in the month following
their loss, but were more depressed one year later. Another study of more than
14,000 university students showed that introspection was associated with poorer
well-being. Still other research suggests that self-analyzers tend to have more
anxiety, less positive social experiences, and more negative attitudes about
themselves.
To help understand why, let’s look at Karen, a 37-year-old real estate agent.
Despite having a successful career, Karen has struggled in her personal life.
When she was just 19, she fell in love with a musician whom she married just
two weeks later. But one short year into their marriage, her husband abruptly left
her. Eventually, Karen remarried, this time to another real estate professional
whom she’d met through work. And though her second marriage lasted longer
than her first, it also ended in divorce, leaving her wondering where she had gone
wrong.
As she carefully examines her life, Karen keeps coming back to what she sees
as the central trauma of her childhood: at just one week old, her birth parents put
her up for adoption. Though she cherishes her adopted parents, Karen has never
really gotten over these feelings of abandonment. Why, she asks herself over and
over, did her birth parents give her up? After untold hours of reflection, Karen
has come to believe that all of her current problems—in relationships and life—
can be traced back to her birth parents’ rejection. With this nugget in hand, Karen
concludes that her relationship issues are a product of her history and thus all but
inevitable.
Just like Karen, most people believe that the answers to our inner mysteries lie
deep within us, and that it’s our job to uncover them—either on our own or with
the help of a therapist or loved one. Yet as my research revealed, the assumption
that introspection begets self-awareness is a myth. In truth, it can cloud and
confuse our self-perceptions, unleashing a whole host of unintended
consequences. Unquestionably, Karen approached her introspective exercise with
the earnest goal of better understanding herself. But without her realizing it, the
process became what self-awareness researcher Timothy Wilson calls
“disruptive.” Continually asking herself why her birth parents gave her up is the
wrong question: not only is it distracting, it surfaces unproductive and upsetting
emotions that won’t help Karen move forward in a healthy way.
Introspection can also lull us into a false sense of certainty that we have
identified the real issue, as it did for Karen. But according to Buddhist scholar
Tirthang Tulku, we can’t always trust what we see when we look inward. Our
“belief in this image,” he notes, “draws us away from the true qualities of our
nature…[and] prevents us from seeing ourselves clearly.” He uses an apt analogy:
when we introspect, our response is similar to a hungry cat watching mice. In
other words, we eagerly pounce on whatever “insights” we find without
questioning their validity or value. And even though they might feel helpful, on
their own they’re unlikely to actually help us improve our internal self-awareness.
Now if you’re someone who values introspection—perhaps you have a
therapist, or you enjoy taking long, reflective walks, or you simply take pride in
being in touch with yourself—these findings might be concerning. But we need
not despair. The problem with introspection, it turns out, isn’t that it’s
categorically ineffective, but that many people are doing it completely
wrong. In this chapter, I’ll overturn the four biggest myths, or follies, of this
practice, exposing why each doesn’t work the way we think it does and how
approaching introspection a bit differently can yield deeper insight about who we
are.
Folly #1: The Myth of the Padlocked Basement (or Why We Can’t Excavate
Our Unconscious)
Betty Draper enters her psychoanalyst’s office, removes her scarf and coat, and
carefully collapses onto a black leather couch. Without a word, the psychoanalyst
solemnly sinks into an armchair behind her, notepad in hand. Betty sighs deeply,
pauses for a moment, and begins to reflect on her feelings about the upcoming
Thanksgiving holiday and how stressful it is for her. Conveniently out of Betty’s
sight, her therapist stares at his notepad without interjecting, save for a few
utterances of “uh-huh” throughout her soliloquy.
“This has helped,” Betty confidently states at the conclusion of her session. But
has it, really? This scene, set in 1961, is from Season 1 of the television show
Mad Men. Betty has sought psychoanalysis to deal with her unrelenting feelings
of anxiety. Yet months into her treatment, she fails to see any improvement and
her husband, Don, begins to grow impatient about Betty’s progress. “It’s a
process,” the analyst reassures him, “you’ve got to trust the process.”
The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, would have likely told Don
Draper the same thing. Underpinning his famous theory, which he developed in
1896 and practiced for the remaining 40 years of his career, was the idea that
there exists a hidden part of the human psyche lurking below our consciousness—
one that cleverly represses important information about ourselves. It was the
psychoanalyst’s job to excavate these sometimes painful insights through deep
and focused analysis, which could often take many years. (In Betty Draper’s case,
she may have been confined to her therapist’s couch for the next decade had she
not learned that he was reporting their conversations back to her husband—an
ethical no-no, even back then.) And as you’re about to see, whether or not you’re
in therapy, Freud’s psychoanalytic approach created arguably the strongest, most
persistent myth of internal self-awareness.
While Freud’s theories were mostly met with respect and reverence in the
twentieth century, the twenty-first has not been so kind. Psychologist Todd
Dufresne, for example, didn’t hedge his bets about Freud when he concluded that
“no other notable figure in history was so fantastically wrong about nearly every
important thing he had to say.” Freud has been appropriately criticized for failing
to scientifically test his approach, with some even accusing him of unethical
behavior, like falsifying patient files to fit more neatly into his theories. Many
contend that his methods were ineffective at best, and that he may have actually
worsened some of his patients’ mental health. Take the famous case of “The
Wolfman,” Sergius Pankejeff, whom Freud supposedly cured of his crippling
anxiety and depression. Unfortunately, Pankejeff didn’t share Freud’s sentiments,
enduring psychoanalysis for another 60 years and calling the psychoanalyst’s
impact on his life a “catastrophe.”
And while much of Freud’s work has been largely discredited, his enduring
influence on our assumptions about introspection simply cannot be overstated.
Most people still believe in the now-debunked promise that we can extract selfinsight through deep psychological excavation—whether it’s through therapy or
any other dedicated approach to self-examination.
*2 Though Freud was correct in
identifying the existence of the unconscious, he completely missed the boat on
how it worked. Specifically, where Freud believed that our unconscious thoughts,
motives, feelings, and behaviors could be accessed through psychoanalysis,
research has unequivocally shown that we can’t uncover them, no matter how
hard we try. It’s as though our unconscious were trapped in a basement behind a
padlocked door, and Freud believed he’d found the key. But modern scientists
have shown that there actually is no key (not unlike the spoon that wasn’t in The
Matrix). Our subconscious, in other words, is less like a padlocked door and
more like a hermetically sealed vault.
But if Freud’s techniques don’t produce insight, is this an indictment of all
attempts to excavate our unconscious—most notably therapy—as a means to do
it?
*3 Certainly, therapy serves many empirically supported purposes, like helping
spouses and families better understand one another and treating disorders like
depression and anxiety. But some findings should give us pause in assuming that
it universally improves self-insight. First, placebo effects may explain up to half
of therapy’s efficacy—in other words, just thinking that it helps us is part of what
makes it help us. What’s more, as counseling psychologist Jennifer Lyke points
out, the most important predictor of success isn’t the technique the therapist uses,
but the relationship she has with her client. However, the fact that some people—
including 20 percent of our unicorns—have successfully used therapy as a path to
insight means we shouldn’t dismiss it completely.
So the right question probably isn’t “Does therapy work?” but instead “How
can we approach therapy to maximize insight?”
*4 Because it can help—to a
certain extent, under certain conditions, and particularly if we approach it
intelligently and acknowledge its potential limitations.
The first imperative is to choose the right approach—one that focuses less on
the process of introspection and more on the outcome of insight (i.e., each of the
Seven Pillars, like our values, reactions, patterns, etc.). “The danger of too much
introspection in therapy,” Dr. Lara Fielding, a Los Angeles–based clinical
psychologist, says, “is that we spin a story that gets us stuck.” In other words,
rather than getting wrapped up in how broken we are, we should be focusing on
what we can learn and how to move forward. One such approach is Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy, or CBT. Fielding, who specializes in CBT, explains that the
goal is to use “skillful self-reflection” to unearth our unproductive thinking and
behavior patterns so we can make better choices in the future. In the case of
Karen, for example, this approach might help her recognize the residual trauma
from her adoption and turn her focus to loosening her grip on it, changing the
patterns of behavior that aren’t serving her, and moving forward with
understanding and purpose.
Another tip is to adopt a flexible mindset, which is applicable both within
and outside the confines of a therapist’s office. A flexible mindset means
remaining open to several truths and explanations, rather than seeking, as Freud
often did, one root cause to explain a broad range of feelings and behaviors. This
involves letting go of a desire for something that Turkish psychologist Omer
Simsek calls the need for absolute truth. Unquestionably, a common motivation
for introspection (or even to buy a book like this one) is to finally figure
ourselves out, once and for all.
Yet paradoxically, the search for this kind of rigid and unequivocal certainty
about ourselves is the enemy of internal self-awareness. Why? It blinds us to the
many nuances in how we think, feel, behave, and interact with the world around
us. Simsek observes that it can “hinder the search for, or creation of, alternative
viewpoints to the problems [we] experience [and therefore] can undermine the
usefulness of…self-reflection.” Not only does a quest for absolute truth result in
less insight, it can have unintended consequences such as depression, anxiety, and
rumination (which we’ll return to shortly). And, counterintuitively, my research
shows that when self-aware people let go of this need, the more self-aware they
become, whether or not they seek therapy. (For a quick diagnostic of your need
for absolute truth, see appendix J.)
So what, then, is the role of therapy in internal self-awareness? It is probably
best to see it as a tool to seek a new perspective and help us explore our own. As
one unicorn put it, a therapist’s value is in “holding a mirror to our thoughts,
feelings and behaviors.” More broadly, introspection should be a process of open
and curious exploration rather than a search for definitive answers. Kelsey, a
middle school science teacher and unicorn we’ll meet later in the book, likens the
quest for self-knowledge to space exploration: “There is so little we know, but
that’s what makes it so exciting.” The bottom line is that it’s virtually impossible
to find singular causes for anything in our complicated world, let alone our own
messy thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, but letting go of this need helps set the
stage for self-awareness.
Folly #2: Why Not Ask Why?
Think about your favorite movie, book, or TV show. If I asked you to describe
why you like it, what would you say? At first, it might be difficult to articulate. I
don’t know—The Great Gatsby is just a really good book. But after some thought,
you’d probably come up with a few reasons. The characters are interesting.
Fitzgerald’s prose is crisp and smart. And I’ve always really liked Long Island. If I
asked how confident you were about those reasons, you’d likely say you were
pretty sure. But you’d likely be as wrong as you were confident. Though most of
us think we’re a credible authority on our thoughts, feelings, and behavior, there
is a stunning amount of evidence showing that we’re often remarkably mistaken.
In one study that’s equal parts hilarious and enlightening, a pair of Harvard
Business School professors showed male college students different issues of a
sports magazine. They varied the number of sports covered, the number of
feature articles, and the theme of the issue, which was either a “top ten athletes”
ranking or photos of women in swimsuits. For half the participants, the swimsuit
issue covered more sports, and for the other half, it contained more feature
articles. The researchers then asked their eager subjects which magazine they
preferred and to rank the criteria used to make their choice (e.g., number of
sports, feature articles, etc.). In the category of “findings that surprised absolutely
no one,” the male students overwhelmingly preferred the swimsuit issue.
But when asked to explain why, something interesting happened: they inflated
the importance of the magazine’s other attributes—regardless of what they were
—to justify their (clearly hormonal) preference. If their swimsuit issue covered
more sports, they listed that as the reason; the same thing happened for the issue
with more feature articles. And lest we label this tendency to rationalize our
preferences as hilarious but innocuous, similar findings have emerged in highstakes situations, like the tendency to hire men over women for stereotypically
male jobs.
Yet when it comes to preferring a swimsuit magazine or hiring a man over a
woman, isn’t it possible that we know the real reason for our behavior but just
don’t want to admit it to others? For the answer, let’s turn to one of the most
famous studies in psychology. Even if you’ve read about it before, it’s instructive
in showing just how clueless we are about why we behave the way we do. In the
1970s, psychologists Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron conducted a creative study
in the Capilano River Regional Park in Vancouver, Canada. Their subjects were
tourists visiting the park who had just crossed one of two bridges. The first was
sturdy and not particularly scary-looking. The second was a suspension bridge
hovering 240 feet in the air. Imagine how you would feel walking across this:
Dutton and Aron hired an attractive woman to stand at the end of each bridge
and invite male passersby to take a short survey, after which she would give them
her phone number in case they “wanted to talk further.” In reality, they wanted to
see how many men would call to ask her out after the study. The idea was that
those crossing the suspension bridge would experience a rush of excitement and
attribute it to the woman, making them more likely to call her. And that’s exactly
what happened. Versus only 12 percent of the sturdy-bridge crossers, 50 percent
of the men who crossed the suspension bridge picked up the phone.
But when Dutton and Aron asked the men why they called, do you think
anyone said, “Walking across the rickety suspension bridge led to a state of
autonomic arousal, but rather than attributing the cause of my increased heart
rate, dry mouth, and sweaty palms to a fear of plunging to my death, I
misattributed them to the woman I saw at the end of it”? Of course not. Their
comments were more like, “I called her because she was pretty.” Obviously, the
female confederate looked the same in both the conditions, so that can’t be the
whole story. More likely, it was simply the most reasonable and logical
explanation, so the men latched on to it without any further questioning. As Ben
Franklin once said, “so convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it
enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.”
The bottom line is that when we ask why, that is, examine the causes of our
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, we are generally searching for the easiest
and most plausible answer. Sadly, though, once we have found one, we generally
stop looking—despite having no way of knowing whether our answer is right or
wrong. Sometimes this is a result of something called “confirmation bias,” which
can prompt us to invent reasons that confirm our existing beliefs—and since our
answers reflect how we see ourselves, we accept them as true. If I see myself as
literary, I’ll list Fitzgerald’s crisp prose as the reason why I love The Great Gatsby,
or if I fancy myself an astute study of the human psyche, I might cite the
complexity of his characters. This is just one example of how asking “why” can
simultaneously muddy the waters while giving us an inflated sense of confidence
in our newfound “insight.”
Asking why can also cause our often lazy brains to mislead us. Let’s say that I
ask you to list all the reasons why your relationship is going the way it is. And
let’s say that last night, your spouse stayed out at the office happy hour later than
planned, leaving you alone to cook dinner for your visiting, and rather dull, inlaws. Because of something called the “recency effect,” this could be your most
salient thought about your relationship—so when you’re asked why the
relationship is going the way it is, your brain might misdirect you to the first
available explanation—he doesn’t spend enough time at home and leaves me to deal
with his parents—even though that behavior is actually rare and out of character.
Likewise, if instead of leaving you alone with your in-laws, your otherwise
unavailable spouse had surprised you with a weekend getaway, your brain might
mislead you to think your relationship is in better shape than it really is.
Asking why can also reduce the quality of our decisions. In one study,
researchers asked self-described basketball experts to predict the outcomes of
national tournament basketball games. Half analyzed the reasons for their
predictions prior to making them, and half were simply asked to make their
predictions. Astonishingly, those who questioned their choices predicted far
fewer winners than those who didn’t—once they started to overthink things, their
expertise went out the window. Other investigations have shown that asking why
reduces our satisfaction with the choices we make.
A final reason that makes asking why disruptive is the negative impact it has
on our overall mental health. In one study, after British university students failed
what they were told was an intelligence test, they were asked to write about why
they felt the way they did. Compared to a control group, they were more
depressed immediately afterward, and even 12 hours later. Here, asking why
caused the participants to fixate on their problems and place blame instead of
moving forward in a healthy and productive way.
So if asking why doesn’t help us better understand our true thoughts and
emotions, what should we ask? A study by psychologists J. Gregory Hixon and
William Swann provides a shockingly simple answer. After telling a group of
undergraduates that two raters would be evaluating their personality based on a
test of “sociability, likeability and interestingness” that they’d taken earlier in the
semester, the researchers asked the students to judge the accuracy of their results
(which were actually exactly the same for everyone: one rater gave a positive
evaluation and the other gave a negative one). Before making their accuracy
judgments, some participants were given time to think about why they were the
kind of person they were and others were asked to think about what kind of
person they were.
The “why” students, it turned out, were resistant to the negative evaluation:
instead of accepting or even considering it, they spent their time “rationaliz[ing],
justify[ing], and explain[ing] [it] away.” The “what” students, on the other hand,
were more receptive to that same new data, and to the notion that it could help
them better understand themselves. The lesson here is that asking “what” keeps us
open to discovering new information about ourselves, even if that information is
negative or in conflict with our existing beliefs. Asking “why” has an essentially
opposite effect.
Given all of this, it makes sense that our unicorns reported asking “what” often
and “why” rarely. In fact, when we analyzed the transcripts of our interviews, the
word “why” appeared less than 150 times, but the word “what” appeared more
than 1,000 times! One unicorn, a 42-year-old mother who bravely walked away
from a career as a lawyer when she finally realized that there was no joy for her
in that path, explained it well:
If you ask why, you’re putting yourself into a victim mentality.
People end up in therapy forever for that. When I feel anything
other than peace, I say “What’s going on?” “What am I feeling?”
“What is the dialogue inside my head?” “What’s another way to see
this situation?” “What can I do to respond better?”
So when it comes to internal self-awareness, a simple tool that can have a
rather dramatic impact is one I call What Not Why. Let’s look at an example of it
in action. Recently, I was talking with my good friend Dan. Having run his own
business for many years, Dan is living the good life: he makes tons of money,
lives in a huge house, and works from home a few hours a week when he isn’t
traveling to exotic destinations. Which is why I was stunned to hear him say, “I
am so unhappy. I think I need to sell my company. But I don’t know what else I
want to do.”
This situation presented an opportunity: with geeky glee, I asked Dan if I could
practice my new tool on him. He agreed. When I first inquired “Why do you want
to change what you’re doing?,” Dan let out a huge, hopeless sigh and started
rattling off all of his personal shortcomings: “I’m bored too easily. I’ve gotten
cynical. I don’t know if I’m making any difference in the world.” The “why”
question had the effect I’d predicted: not only did it fail to produce useful insight,
but Dan became, if anything, more confused when he tried to figure out why the
spark had disappeared. So I quickly changed course: “What do you dislike about
what you’re doing?” He thought for a moment. “I dislike sitting in front of my
computer and remotely leading a company—and don’t even get me started on the
time zones. I just feel burnt out and disconnected.”
“Okay, that’s helpful,” I replied. “What do you like?” Without hesitation, Dan
replied, “Speaking. I really like speaking.” He told me that when he was in front
of an audience, he could make an immediate impact. I knew the feeling, and
could see the spark right away. This realization made Dan immediately more
focused and clear-headed—he began to think about whether he could adapt his
current role to spend more time sharing his message.
I could have asked Dan why questions for hours and he’d likely have ended the
conversation with no more insight, and probably in a much worse mood. But less
than five minutes of what questions had drawn out a high-value discovery and a
potential solution to his problem. Dan’s experience is illustrative: Why questions
draw us to our limitations; what questions help us see our potential. Why
questions stir up negative emotions; what questions keep us curious. Why
questions trap us in our past; what questions help us create a better future.
Indeed, making the transition from why to what can be the difference
between victimhood and growth. When Paul, the executive, unicorn, and
neighborhood association activist we met earlier, moved back to the United States
after a stint in Germany, he made the decision to purchase a small ceramics
manufacturing company. Despite its aging equipment, his due diligence suggested
that this was a little company that could: it had weathered the recession and
boasted a stable of tenured employees. But right out of the gate, Paul’s employees
resisted the improvements he began to make, creating delays that hurt the
company’s already bleeding balance sheet. He quickly learned that he’d been too
optimistic with both his budgets and his cash reserves.
At this point, Paul was tempted to go down the dangerous road of why. Why
wasn’t he able to turn things around? Why didn’t he do a better job with his
financial projections? Why wouldn’t his employees listen to him? But he knew
that these questions weren’t productive. So instead, he asked himself, what now?
Paul explored three equally unattractive options: he could burn through his
savings, he could take out a massive loan, or he could close the business. He
chose to close the business. And here he asked what again. What do I need to do
to close up shop? What can I do to lessen the impact on my customers? What can I
do to realize the maximum value of the business?
Armed with these insights, Paul created a plan and began to execute it. Because
he stayed clear-headed, he was even able to find creative ways to do good for
others while winding things down; for example, when he had more unfinished
ceramics products than buyers, he offered the inventory to nearby paint-your-own
ceramics shops, who were downright overjoyed at the windfall. He did the same
thing with his equipment, donating much of it to schools and non-profits. Paul
turned what could have been a shattering earthquake event into a chance to show
what he was made of.
In addition to helping us gain insight to our problems, the What Not Why tool
can also be used to help us better understand and manage our emotions.
Seventeenth-century philosopher Benedict de Spinoza observed that “an emotion,
which is a passion, ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct
idea thereof. [The emotion] becomes more under our control, and the mind is less
passive in respect to it.”
Let’s say you’re in a terrible mood after work one day. We already know that
asking Why do I feel this way? should come with a warning label. It’s likely to
elicit such unhelpful answers as because I hate Mondays! or because I’m just a
negative person! What if you instead asked What am I feeling right now? Perhaps
you’d realize that you’re overwhelmed at work, exhausted, and hungry. Rather
than blindly reacting to these feelings, you take a step back, decide to fix yourself
dinner, call a friend for some advice about how to manage your work stress, and
commit to an early bedtime.
Asking what instead of why forces us to name our emotions, a process that a
strong body of research has shown to be effective. Evidence shows that the
simple act of translating our emotions into language—versus simply experiencing
them—can stop our brains from activating our amygdala, the fight-or-flight
command center, and this in turn helps us stay in control. If this sounds too
simple to be true, try naming your feelings for a week and see what you notice.
All this being said, however, the notion of asking what instead of why may still
be difficult for some people to digest, especially if you’ve been to business school
and/or are trained in techniques like root-cause analysis. In his book How the
Mighty Fall, business author Jim Collins even says that when companies get
wrapped up in what they are and don’t understand why they got that way, they
risk becoming extinct. This highlights an important exception to the rule: when
navigating business challenges or solving problems in your team or your
organization, asking why is critical. For example, if an employee drops the ball on
an important client project, not exploring why it happened means you risk
recurrences of the problem. Or if a new product fails, you need to know the
reason to ensure that products are better in the future. A good rule of thumb,
then, is that why questions are generally better to help us understand our
environment and what questions are generally better to help us understand
ourselves.
Folly #3: Keeping a Journal
Charley Kempthorne has been keeping a journal for more than 50 years. Every
morning before the sun is in the sky, the professor-turned-painter carefully types
out at least 1,000 words reflecting on his past, his beliefs, his family, even his
shortcomings. (His long-held habit of longhand writing was put to bed in the
1980s when he impulse-purchased a Broth Word Processor during a trip to
Sears.) The prolific fruits of his labor reside in an impressive storage facility in
Manhattan, Kansas, where his estimated ten million words are printed, bound,
and filed. This project, Kempthorne says, is an end in itself: “It helps me
understand my life…or maybe,” he hedges, “it just makes me feel better and get
[the day] started in a better mood.” But Kempthorne (along with any journaling
junkie) might be disappointed to learn that his enduring exercise may not have
actually improved his self-awareness.
At this point, you’re probably convinced that I’ve gone completely off the deep
end. Everyone knows, you might be thinking, that journaling is one of the most
effective ways to get in touch with our inner self! However, a growing body of
research suggests that introspection via journaling has some surprising traps that
can suck the insight right out of the experience. My own research, for example,
has shown that people who keep journals generally have no more internal (or
external) self-awareness than those who don’t, with one small but important
exception that I’ll reveal in a moment. In another study, students who reported
keeping diaries showed more self-reflection but less insight—and to boot, the
journalers were more anxious.
And yet, 35 percent of our unicorns reported keeping a journal. How can we
make sense of these peculiar and seemingly contradictory findings? The
resolution lies not in questioning whether journaling is the right thing to do,
but instead discovering how to do journaling right.
Psychologist James Pennebaker’s decades-long research program on something
he calls expressive writing provides powerful direction in finding the answer. It
involves writing, for 20 to 30 minutes at a time, our “deepest thoughts and
feelings about issues that have made a big impact on [our] lives.” In the 30-plus
years during which Pennebaker has been guiding people through this exercise, he
has found that it helps virtually everyone who’s experienced a significant
challenge. Even though some people find writing about their struggles to be
distressing in the short term, nearly all see longer-term improvements in their
mood and well-being.
Pennebaker and his colleagues have shown that people who engage in
expressive writing have better memories, higher grade point averages, less
absenteeism from work, and quicker re-employment after job loss. Expressive
writing has even been shown to help collegiate tennis players improve their
games. And fascinatingly, the physical benefits can be as dramatic as the
psychological ones. In one study, undergraduates who completed Pennebaker’s
journaling exercise for just four days had stronger immune systems and fewer
doctor’s visits than a control group almost two months later.
Intuitively, one might think that the more we study positive events in our
journal entries, the more psychological benefits we’ll reap from the experience.
But this too is a myth. In one study, participants wrote about one of their happiest
times for eight minutes a day over the course of three days. Some were told to
extensively analyze the event and others were instructed to simply relive it. The
analyzers showed less personal growth, self-acceptance, and well-being than those
who relived it. But why was this the case? As G. K. Chesterton perceptively
observed, “Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be
rationalized”—that is, by examining positive moments too closely, we suck the
joy right out of them. Instead, if we simply focus on reliving our happy
memories, it’s relatively easy to avoid this trap. Therefore, the first take-home in
seeking insight from journaling is to explore the negative and not overthink
the positive.
When we explore our negative events through expressive writing, we’ll
generally get the most payoff when we see it as an opportunity for learning and
growth. Pennebaker notes that journalers “who talk about things over and over in
the same ways aren’t getting any better. There has to be growth, change, or
closure in the way they view their experiences.” Mr. Kempthorne, for example,
smartly evolved his approach. His self-described “pompous” early entries focused
too intensely on introspection; now, he says, he writes “short narrative scenes,”
which help him make better sense of his feelings and experiences. Those who
benefit most from expressive writing tend to start with incoherent, disorganized
perceptions of their problems and finish with a coherent, meaningful narrative
(we’ll come back to this idea in the next chapter).
*5
In that way, journaling is
similar to therapy: if used as a means of exploration—of holding up a mirror—it
can help us make sense of the past and the present and move forward more
productively in the future.
Another trap journalers can fall prey to is using the activity solely as an outlet
for discharging emotions. Interestingly, the myriad benefits of expressive writing
only emerge when we write about both the factual and the emotional aspects of
the events we’re describing—neither on its own is effective in producing insight.
Logically, this makes sense: if we don’t explore our emotions, we’re not fully
processing the experience, and if we don’t explore the facts, we risk getting
sucked into an unproductive spiral. True insight only happens when we process
both our thoughts and our feelings.
But we also need to guard against turning journaling into an exercise in selfabsorption. Remember that our unicorns spent more time—on social media and
in face-to-face interactions—focused on things other than themselves. The same
can be said for the practice of journaling. Earlier, I mentioned that the journalers
in our study were no more internally self-aware than non-journalers in every area
but one: where many people see journaling as an opportunity to explore their
inner workings, the truly self-aware know it can also help them understand their
impact on others. Accordingly, our unicorns who journaled often reported
exploring other people’s perspectives in their entries. One told us a story in which
she and a friend had a difficult talk, which ended in her friend crying for reasons
she didn’t understand. She waited a while, and when she was ready, she wrote
about the conversation from her friend’s point of view. The exercise gave her
immediate insight that helped her understand her friend’s reaction and gain a
more objective perspective on her own.
The final thing to keep in mind about journaling should be welcome news to
everyone but Mr. Kempthorne. To ensure maximum benefits, it’s probably best
that you don’t write every day. It’s true: Pennebaker and his colleagues have
shown that writing every few days is better than writing for many days in a row.
“I’m not even convinced,” Pennebaker says, “that people should write about a
horrible event for more than a couple of weeks. You risk getting into a sort of
navel gazing or cycle of self-pity. But standing back every now and then and
evaluating where you are in life is really important.” And indeed, few unicorns
reported writing in their journals every day. Jeff, the architect-turnedentrepreneur we met a few chapters back, told us that he journals only when he’s
trying to make a difficult decision. Like other unicorns, he uses the process to
make sense of his life on a broader level rather than a daily means of
psychological excavation.
Of course, if you’re a prolific journaler, the right approach may require some
restraint. But with a little self-discipline, you can easily train yourself to write less
and learn more. If you currently write daily, start by limiting yourself to every
other day, then every third day, then try easing into just once a week. Mark the
journal days in your calendar, and keep a few Post-it notes handy to jog your
memory about what topics you want to tackle.
Folly #4: The Evil Twin of Introspection
If one of the worst things that ever happened to Marcia Donziger was being
diagnosed with Stage III ovarian cancer when she was just 27, one of the best was
the overwhelming love and kindness she received from her family and friends as
she recovered from surgery and chemotherapy. And while Marcia couldn’t have
been more grateful for that support, she learned that with such love and attention
came a surprising downside. Marcia felt pressure to personally thank everyone
for their kindness and obligated to keep them all updated. She was exhausted
from making phone call after phone call, saying the same thing over and over,
when all she really wanted to do was rest. Thankfully, Marcia made a full
recovery. But she never forgot the unexpected burdens she faced in keeping her
loved ones informed.
A few years later, when a close friend of Marcia’s was also diagnosed with
cancer, her friend created a simple but effective website to communicate with
friends and family. And it got Marcia thinking. What if every cancer patient had
access to a free, customized service to post updates, receive messages, access
resources, and organize their treatment—all in one place? Not only would such a
service help patients’ friends and family rally around them, it would free up their
time and energy to heal.
Marcia turned her idea into reality, founding the non-profit organization
MyLifeLine.org, which today boasts hundreds of thousands of registered users.
She quickly learned that making a non-profit financially viable takes a serious
amount of fundraising, often in the form of speeches to potential donors. Luckily,
Marcia had always been excellent at talking about this deeply personal cause.
That is, until one hot spring afternoon, when she was slated to speak at
MyLifeLine.org’s annual Kentucky Derby fundraiser. The year before, her
speech had earned a thunderous standing ovation. But today, Marcia felt off her
game for some reason, and her pounding migraine wasn’t helping. As she stood at
the podium, looking out at her 400 expectant, mint-julep-sipping guests, her
mouth was dry and her mind was empty.
And if you think this is the point in the story where I tell you it was all in her
head, and that her speech was in fact a stunning success, think again. It was
nothing short of a disaster—she spoke too fast, flubbed her words, and at one
point completely forgot what she was saying. When it was finally over, the
smattering of polite applause she received felt like boos and jeers. And when
Marcia mingled among the guests after her speech, no one even mentioned it.
(The year before, almost everyone had congratulated her.) She felt it in the pit of
her stomach: she knew she’d let the organization down.
That night, Marcia was in tears as she told her family what had happened. And
for weeks, she obsessed over her public humiliation. Every morning, she’d wake
up feeling embarrassed, replaying her speech—and the audience’s uncomfortable
reaction—over and over in her mind. Though her boyfriend kept assuring her that
it hadn’t been that bad, Marcia continued her endless self-flagellation.
John Milton once said that the mind “can make a heaven of hell, and a hell of
heaven.” At some point, I’m sure that you too have found yourself stuck in this
kind of endless loop of self-scrutiny—almost everyone does. We might replay a
certain conversation in our minds, beat ourselves up about something we did (or
didn’t do), or twist ourselves into mental knots trying to figure out why we’re not
the person we want to be. How could I have embarrassed myself in front of all
those people? Why am I still in this horrible relationship? Why can’t I stop eating
those damn cookies and finally lose this holiday weight? And as anyone who has
gotten stuck in this cycle knows, we don’t ask ourselves these questions once or
twice or even three times—but over and over, to the point that we can think of
little else.
This single-minded fixation on our fears, shortcomings, and insecurities has a
name: it’s called rumination, and it’s introspection’s evil twin.
*6 As you may
have guessed, in addition to simply being a mental hell, rumination is also a huge
barrier to insight. And just as Marcia discovered, once we fall down the rabbit
hole, it’s tough to claw our way out. Sometimes it even gets to the point of
ruminating that we can’t stop ruminating!
I believe there is a nefarious character buried deep within each of us. The
Ruminator is ready at a moment’s notice to second-guess our choices and remind
us where we come up short. Sometimes, when this sly, stealthy creature kicks us
down his evil spiral, we are fully aware that it’s happening, though we feel
helpless to stop it. But other times, and far more dangerously, the Ruminator
tricks us into believing that we’re engaging in productive self-reflection. After all,
why else would we put ourselves through such mental self-flagellation if not to
gain insight? In Marcia’s case, for instance, it would have been easy to believe
that her rumination was serving a useful purpose. If she could understand what
went wrong, she’d be able to do a better job next time, right? I sometimes even
hear people use the word “ruminate” as a synonym for “reflect” (i.e., “that’s an
interesting question; let me ruminate on it for a few days”). This is why
rumination is the most insidious of all the follies: not only does it effectively
prevent insight, it can masquerade as productive self-reflection.
*7 And when it
comes to self-awareness, if introspection is disruptive, rumination is
disastrous.
At this point, you may be recognizing yourself more and more in the
descriptions of such behavior. We all do it, though some more than others (and by
the way, you can get a read on how often you ruminate by taking the assessment
in appendix K). And although we can ruminate on just about anything, research
has shown that we do it most when we feel we don’t measure up in an area that’s
especially important to us. A chronic people-pleaser might ruminate about
upsetting a close friend; a workaholic might ruminate about a poor performance
rating; a devoted mother might ruminate after her surly teenager tells her she’s the
worst mom ever.
But “normal” or not, rumination might be costing you more than you think. My
own research has shown that frequent ruminators are less satisfied with their lives
and relationships, feel less control over their destiny, and are generally less happy.
Other research has shown that rumination is related to lower grades, impaired
problem solving, worse moods, and poorer-quality sleep.
And when it comes to our mental health, rumination can be a sad, vicious
cycle. For example, people who experience depression are more likely to get
stuck in ruminative thought patterns, causing them to focus more on their
depression and, as a result, feel even worse. Ruminators are also more stressed
and anxious even in the absence of depression. In one of the largest studies on
stress to date, a survey of more than 32,000 people from 172 countries found that
while the number and severity of negative events in people’s lives were the
biggest predictors of mental health problems, their rumination levels were also a
significant factor in how much stress and anxiety they experienced.
Earlier we learned that introspection can be an obstacle to insight. If that’s the
case, rumination might as well be a 50-foot-high blockade. When we’re
ruminating, we’re spending so much energy looking at what’s wrong with us that
we have no mental energy left to explore any of the pillars of insight. As one of
our unicorns said, “If we spend too much time scrutinizing what’s in our rearview
mirror, we’re certain to crash into a light post.” That’s why research shows that
despite incessantly processing their feelings, ruminators are less accurate at
identifying their emotions: their minds are so laser-focused on an incident,
reaction, or personal weakness that they miss the larger picture.
Another reason rumination is an enemy of insight is that it’s effectively an
avoidance strategy. This might seem odd, given that the process involves
endlessly dwelling on our problems. But in reality, when we obsess over the
causes and meaning behind negative events, we keep the emotions that come with
them at arm’s length, which can often be even more painful for us than the act of
ruminating. Indeed, there is a correlation between rumination and other avoidant
coping strategies like drinking. In one study of people who had just completed a
rehabilitation program for alcohol abuse, ruminators were 70 percent more likely
than non-ruminators to relapse to their previous drinking levels. Ruminators have
also been shown to avoid the people and situations causing them to ruminate
instead of dealing with them directly.
For all these reasons, rumination clearly hurts our ability to accurately read our
internal selves. But even though the process is largely an inwardly focused
phenomenon, it can also hurt our external self-awareness. For one thing,
ruminators are so busy beating themselves up that they neglect to think about how
they might be showing up to others. They generally ignore or avoid feedback, lest
it send them down the rabbit hole. They therefore tend not just to be poor
perspective-takers, but also to be more narcissistic and self-absorbed than nonruminators.
Now, it’s tempting to assume that self-awareness unicorns are blissfully
unencumbered by the malevolent malady of rumination. After all, they are
unicorns, right? But even though they ruminate much less often than the rest of
us, they aren’t immune—only 7 percent reported never doing it. But we did find
that they used two slightly different tactics.
First, unicorns were better at recognizing when the Ruminator was creeping up
on them and subsequently better at stopping him in his tracks. In fact, roughly
three-fourths employed specific rumination-busting strategies, which we’ll
discuss in a moment. Second, they had a more self-accepting attitude about
rumination in general. One unicorn, a former teacher and stay-at-home mom of
four, explained that “the goal can’t be rumination zero. It is a part of life. My goal
is to identify it as quickly as possible, work on a strategy to get out of it, and not
be upset with myself about doing it.” Another unicorn (okay, it’s my sister Abby,
whom we’ll meet in the next chapter) told us that “rumination is like a storm. It
comes through, rains on everything, and then when it’s done, there is blue sky.
Funnily, one way I deal with rumination is to not worry about it!”
Let’s circle back to Marcia’s public-speaking catastrophe. What I didn’t
mention earlier is that Marcia is also a unicorn, and that this event was a pivotal
milestone in her self-awareness journey. While Marcia was tunneling down the
rumination rabbit hole, her team at MyLifeLine.org was busy tallying the amount
they had raised at the event. When the number was finally in, the CEO gathered
her staff in the conference room. She ominously announced, “Well, I’m going to
come straight out with it.” Marcia felt sick. She braced herself for the moment an
actual dollar amount would be put on her failure, and in front of her entire team
no less.
But instead, she heard, “This was the single most successful fundraising event
we’ve ever had.” In that moment, Marcia had an epiphany: while she had been
obsessing about her speech, everyone else had long forgotten it—after all, they
had far more important things to think about. And her less-than-awesome
performance had in no way detracted from the success of the event.
Since this realization, Marcia has learned to ask herself the following question
whenever she is about to fall down the rabbit hole: Does anyone else care about
this as much as I do? When the answer is no, she tries to let it go. And in fact,
reminding ourselves that people don’t generally care about our mistakes as
much as we think they do was one of our unicorns’ most commonly cited
rumination-busting strategies.
Another mindset that can help us combat rumination was originally discovered
by child psychologists Carol Dweck and Carol Diener in the 1980s. When Dweck
and Diener observed fifth-graders during a problem-solving exercise, they
noticed that the children approached the task with one of two distinct mindsets.
Some were more concerned with their performance (let’s call them the “do-well”
kids), while others placed more importance on learning and improving (the
“learn-well” kids). When the children were succeeding, both groups were engaged
and happy—no huge surprise there.
When the children began to fail, however, a dramatic difference emerged. The
do-well kids became upset and blamed their failings on personal shortcomings
(i.e., the Ruminator was out in full force). They also had various “this is stupid,
I’m taking my toys and going home” reactions, like bragging about their abilities
in other areas or telling the researchers they were bored. And knowing what we
now know about rumination, it’s not surprising that two-thirds showed a
subsequent decline in their problem-solving abilities.
The learn-well children, on the other hand, reacted completely differently to
their failure. In fact, they didn’t see it as a failure at all. One gleefully reported, “I
love a challenge” while rubbing his hands together and smacking his lips (which
might also be the cutest reaction imaginable). And where the do-well kids fell
into a spiral of self-loathing, the learn-well kids’ self-confidence actually
improved. Nearly all maintained their problem-solving abilities, with many
increasing them substantially.
A learn-well mindset—that is, channeling our thinking to focus on learning
over performance—is not only a great rumination-buster; it has also been shown
to improve work performance in adults. In one study, for example, the mindset
helped medical-supplies salespeople to persist in the face of challenges.
Compared with those who had a do-well mindset, the learn-well reps had
significantly stronger sales performance over a three-month period.
When things go wrong, are you a “learn-well” or a “do-well” kind of person?
Do you fall down the rabbit hole, or do you pick yourself up, dust yourself off,
and reattack the task? (If you’re curious, I’ve included an assessment in appendix
L to help you find out.) If you’re more “do-well” than you’d prefer, there is good
news: research has repeatedly shown that we have the power to change our
mindset. One unicorn shared a wonderful story that illustrates how. Tim, a
longtime pharmaceutical executive, had hired a high-level manager without
enough due diligence. When the manager crashed and burned, Tim beat himself
up about it for days. Luckily, he and his family—Tim’s high school sweetheart
and their two grown sons—had booked a ten-day cruise the following week.
One picture-perfect morning, Tim woke up before everyone else and decided
to take a walk on the deck. But even with the fresh ocean air swirling around him,
he again found himself dwelling on his mistake. Just as the Ruminator was about
to hijack his day, he looked out at the ocean and realized something: Even though
I made this mistake, the world isn’t going to end, and it’s sure taught me not to do it
again. Then, the perfect metaphor presented itself: I have to toss this overboard!
So he did—as a result, he was able to enjoy the rest of the week with his family,
and return to work a smarter, wiser leader.
Our third rumination-buster is actually a distraction technique. Although this
move—which I call hitting pause—feels like the last thing we should do when
something is truly vexing us, it’s one of the simplest rumination-busters at our
disposal. Instead of replaying our self-doubt on repeat, we can walk away and do
something that will take our mind off it. Research shows that the most effective
distractions are those that have a fast and positive reward of some kind, like
cleaning, seeing friends, or exercising. (I personally believe that few ruminative
episodes can withstand a bike ride on a beautiful, sunny Colorado day.) And
while I don’t condone permanently running away from the hard stuff, hitting
pause helps us come back to our problems later, and with a more level head. Once
we get some distance, we start to see them as less upsetting and more solvable—
and sometimes they cease to look like problems at all.
The fourth tool is the oddly useful method of thought-stopping, which is
similar to hitting pause but doesn’t involve actively stepping away; this pause
instead takes place internally. In one study, psychiatric patients were asked to let
their minds wander to whatever ruminative thought came into their mind (actual
examples from the study: their teeth were decaying; they had touched vomit; they
couldn’t stop thinking about women’s buttocks—just your average, run-of-themill worries). Then, their therapist yelled “Stop!” while making a sudden noise.
As ridiculous as this sounds, it stopped the patients’ rumination right in its tracks.
If you don’t have a therapist to follow you around and scream at you, it might
help to picture a large stop sign, or to say to yourself I’m not getting anything out
of this, and it’s time to stop these thoughts.
Thought-stopping can be especially helpful in combating something I call postdecision rumination (or PDR for short). Once we’ve made a difficult decision,
the Ruminator loves to taunt us with questions like “Are you sure you made the
right call?” and “Do you know how disastrous it will be if you’re wrong?” But by
stirring up so much self-doubt, PDR can paralyze us just when we need to move
forward and successfully execute our decision. As a result, it’s easy to see why
PDR can be especially dangerous for big decisions like selling a business unit,
changing careers, or ending a marriage. So when facing a difficult decision, by all
means, deliberate over it as much as you need to—weigh the pros and cons,
evaluate different scenarios, seek advice. But once you make it, you have to trust
it and move forward. This doesn’t mean ignoring the consequences of our
decisions. On the contrary, stopping PDR is what you need to do so you can
manage them without the distraction of all that unproductive mental chatter.
Finally, allow me to introduce our last rumination-busting tool, reality checks,
by way of an upsetting but instructive personal story. A while back, I was
delivering a yearlong leadership development program for a client. Six months in,
we sent out a survey to learn how people were feeling about the experience: what
they liked and how we could make it better. The results were overwhelmingly
positive. But thankfully, they didn’t hold back on how we could improve, and we
heard many productive suggestions. I was feeling pretty good, until I read this:
My biggest learning from this program is how much money a
consultant can make by presenting banal, trivial, feel-good, recycled
and repackaged pop psychology and common sense concepts as
innovative leadership training.
Ouch, right? My initial response was to laugh, even though I didn’t actually find
it the least bit funny. Then I started to feel like someone had punched me in the
stomach. Could he be right? I began to wonder. Has everyone else been thinking
this but were too afraid to tell me? Then came the absolute panic. Have I been
completely incompetent this whole time?! The Ruminator had come to roost, and he
wouldn’t leave for weeks. I just couldn’t stop replaying the comment in my mind.
Whenever I met with a client or gave a speech, there it was: Your ideas are trivial
and banal. Get out of this line of work immediately. Stop embarrassing yourself.
After weeks of mental anguish, and probably a little too late, I finally decided
to call a friend who is a much better consultant than I am. “I’m sorry you had to
hear that,” she began after patiently listening to my story. “My first reaction is
that I feel sorry for this guy. You’re a phenomenal consultant, and I’d guess that
his comment was more about him than it was about you.” I had been so upset that
this hadn’t even crossed my mind. “But,” she continued, “let’s assume there’s
something productive in his feedback anyway. Do you have any objective
evidence that your ideas aren’t original?” (By the way, this question is another
superb rumination-buster.)
Her inquiry instantly changed my mindset from I am horrible at my job to
Maybe there’s something I can learn from this. “Well,” I ventured, “There aren’t
many new things under the sun when it comes to leadership, and I’m certainly not
the most creative person in the world. But people tell me that one of my strengths
is making fuzzy concepts accessible and actionable, not necessarily that I always
tell them something about leadership they didn’t already know.” Then, a blinding
flash of the obvious hit me. “Maybe I should just say that at the beginning of my
programs.” And ever since then, I have.
The person who wrote that nasty comment almost certainly wasn’t trying to
help me, but my friend’s reality check helped me learn from it anyway. Almost to
a person, our unicorns reported that when in the grip of rumination, one of the
best things we can do is get a reality check from someone we trust. And when we
do, there is usually an opportunity for both hope and learning.
You now understand the four biggest follies of introspection: that there is no
key to the padlocked basement, that asking ourselves why is as pointless as it is
dangerous, that journaling doesn’t always increase self-knowledge, and that
rumination masquerading as introspection can hurt us more than we realize.
You’ve also learned how to carefully avoid the traps that can come along with
them, as well as five rumination-busting strategies you can use right away:
remembering that no one cares about our mistakes as much as we think,
cultivating a learn-well mindset, hitting pause, thought-stopping, and reality
checks. In the next chapter, you’ll learn three more powerful and battle-tested
internal self-awareness tools.
*1 I use the word “introspection” synonymously with “self-reflection” or “self-examination.”
*2 To be fair, psychoanalysis has evolved, and many twenty-first-century approaches now work
to give clients a more integrated view of themselves versus trying to open the padlocked
basement door. This actually resembles the Life Story approach we’ll learn about in chapter 6.
*3 An important note here: when I refer to therapy, this does not include the practice of
leadership and executive coaching, which is more related to the solutions-focused approach
that we’ll talk about in chapter 6.
*4 This is also assuming that you’re seeking treatment for more everyday issues and general
insight, as opposed to a more significant issue like abuse, depression, anxiety, etc.
*5 And when journalers use more causal and insight-related words like “infer,” “reason,”
“understanding,” and “realize” to make sense of negative events, the benefits of journaling
increase exponentially.
*6 By the way, most researchers believe that rumination is different from worry; whereas
rumination typically focuses on past or present events, worry focuses on our fears about the
future.
*7 When we engage in “normal” self-reflection, a part of our brain called the default mode is
activated. But Stanford researcher J. Paul Hamilton recently discovered that when we
ruminate, another area of our brain also turns on that, among other things, is involved in
processing sadness—the subgenual prefrontal cortex. The fact that both of these regions are
activated when we ruminate helps explain why rumination can often masquerade as
introspection, and how it blocks our brains’ ability to gain insight. Though it’s rather clunky, if
you’re ruminating, you might say, “There goes my subgenual prefrontal cortex bumming me
out and preventing me from gaining insight again!”
Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is
to come or remembering what has gone.
—LOUIS L’AMOUR
After a three-hour drive from my home in Denver, my younger sister Abby and I
were bumping down a narrow dirt road in the Roosevelt National Forest on our
way to the Shambhala Mountain Center.
When we finally pulled into the dusty parking lot, I grouched, “I want to go
home.”
Abby met my sullen mood with a beaming smile. “Well, I can’t wait,” she said,
sniffing the air. “A whole weekend with nothing to do but hang out with you and
practice mindfulness in the Colorado Rockies!”
“But I want to go home,” I repeated, this time with a dramatic whine.
“Oh God, Tasha,” she said, “people come from all over the world to meditate
here.”
“And visit The Great Stupid.” I chuckled at my own lame and oddly hostile
joke.
“The Great Stupa,” she said. “The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya.” As she
reached for her door handle, she solemnly stated, “I have wanted to come to a
mindfulness meditation retreat for years. I am not going to let you ruin this for
me.”
As we lifted our luggage from the back of my vehicle—the sole gas guzzler in
a shoal of hybrids and mud-caked Smart cars—I decided to bite my tongue and
focus on the emergency Xanax I had hidden in my back pocket.
I love my sister deeply, but we are two very different souls. Abby, put simply,
is the warm summer day to my raging winter blizzard. I really wasn’t trying to be
negative—I was just struggling to overcome my aggressive stereotypes about
mindfulness and meditation. Though these days it seems as though virtually
everyone in America practices it, as a hard-nosed scientist, the activity always felt
a bit “woo-woo” to me (i.e., based on wild claims but lacking in scientific
evidence).
Yet upon discovering that 70 percent of our unicorns practiced mindfulness in
some form, I was forced to grudgingly check it out. And what better place than
the Shambhala Mountain Center? Founded by Buddhist meditation master
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in 1971 and home to the famous 108-foot stupa
built in his honor, it is, according to its website, a “contemplative refuge…an
oasis for relaxing into our basic goodness, rediscovering a sense of balance and
appreciating the sacredness of our world.”
As Abby and I dragged our luggage down the long, cold path toward the
registration center, we approached a gang of very attractive, very fit girls in black
yoga pants. I could tell this wasn’t their first meditation-retreat rodeo. They glared
judgmentally at me and my designer suitcase as we passed—clearly they could
tell its contents didn’t include any clothing made of hemp, and they were right. In
a display of emotional perspicacity that is utterly typical of Abby, who is ten
years my junior, she stopped to reassure me. “Ignore the Mindfulness Mean
Girls,” she said. “If you give it a chance, this weekend will be amazing. It’s
exactly what you need.”
“You’re right,” I finally conceded. “It’s only nerves. I just have to get over
myself.”
“Give it twenty-four hours,” she said, smiling optimistically. “I guarantee you’ll
be loving it.”
In the last chapter, we learned about the follies of introspection and how to
avoid them to increase our internal self-awareness. Thankfully, there are many
surprisingly effective approaches. For example, Buddhists have practiced
meditation—which has been shown to produce powerful self-awareness
improvements—for thousands of years. And unless you live under a rock, you’ve
probably noticed that it’s experiencing a renaissance. But though meditation may
be one of the oldest paths to internal self-awareness, it isn’t the only path. In this
chapter, we’ll learn three separate but complimentary strategies to dramatically
increase our internal insight. One is designed to examine who we are in the
present, another to probe the patterns rooted in our past, and another to make sure
we reap the rewards of self-examination in the future. Let’s start with a popular
tool that helps us understand the present: mindfulness, both the meditative and
the non-meditative varieties.
If introspection means analyzing our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and
ruminating means unproductively dwelling on them, mindfulness is the opposite:
simply noticing what we’re thinking, feeling, and doing without judgment
or reaction. Yet contrary to popular belief, mindfulness and meditation are not
always synonymous. People tend to associate mindfulness with yogis or ashrams
or silent retreats, but in recent years, it’s come to encompass a much wider (and
thankfully more diverse) range of activities. This is in no small part due to the
work of Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, who has been researching the topic
since the 1970s. Her work has brought mindfulness “out of the Zen meditation
caves and into the bright light of everyday functioning.”
Where most people mistakenly see mindfulness simply as meditation, Langer
provides a far broader and more practical definition: “the process of actively
noticing new things, relinquishing preconceived mindsets, and then acting on…
[our] new observations.” So even though meditation is one way to practice
mindfulness, it isn’t the only way—and it’s not for everyone. In fact, when asked
about meditation in an interview, Langer once quipped, “The people I know won’t
sit still for five minutes, let alone forty.”
I know the feeling. Truth be told, the idea of relaxing into the present moment
has always kind of stressed me out. Like many of my Type A compatriots, my
nirvana is achieved by checking off all of the items on my daily to-do list. I’m so
addicted to productivity and activity that during our honeymoon, my husband
literally had to pry my BlackBerry out of my hands and lock it in our hotel safe.
Of course, I am certainly not alone in my addiction. In a series of 11
experiments, researcher Timothy Wilson and his colleagues asked participants to
spend between 6 and 15 phoneless minutes in a room by themselves with nothing
to do but think. Not surprisingly, they didn’t exactly enjoy the experience, and
many found it downright unpleasant.
*1 This prompted Wilson to wonder just how
far people would go to avoid being alone with their thoughts. So he designed a
follow-up experiment that gave people the choice between mental quiet time and
an objectively less-pleasant activity: mild electric shocks. Incredibly, more than
half the participants elected to give themselves electric shocks rather than endure
just five solitary minutes. Wilson and his team reached the rather arresting
conclusion that “people prefer to be doing something rather than nothing, even if
that something is [uncomfortable or downright painful].”
Yet in spite of—or perhaps as a reaction to—our addiction to distraction,
mindfulness (and particularly mindfulness meditation) is currently having a bit of
a cultural moment. After all, when celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Anderson
Cooper, and Ellen DeGeneres tout (or, I should say, tweet) the benefits of
anything, you know it’s only a matter of time before the masses jump on board.
And jump on board they have. It’s not just celebrities who have gone gaga over
mindfulness: corporations like Google, McKinsey, Nike, General Mills, Target,
and Aetna are using it to harness the improved productivity and well-being it
supposedly brings. Many have also brought mindfulness into the classroom, with
school programs reaching more than 300,000 students across the country, from
prestigious East Coast preparatory academies to inner-city public high schools.
Even the U.S. Marines and professional sports teams like the Boston Red Sox are
embracing meditation and other mindfulness exercises. The result is a nearly onebillion-dollar cottage industry—and it seems only to be growing.
Paradoxically, despite the trendiness of mindfulness, I don’t think many people
these days would agree that we’re actually getting better at it. If anything, we
seem to be moving in the opposite direction. As just one of many anecdotal
examples, I was recently waiting in line at the airport. To amuse or perhaps
distract myself, I decided to count how many of the travelers at our gate were
scrolling through their smartphones. You might not be shocked to learn that all 42
people—every single one—had their eyes glued to their little screens. It was a
striking example of what Ellen Langer calls mindlessness; instead of being
present, it’s far easier to occupy ourselves with distractions like e-mail, texts,
Facebook, Instagram, Pokémon GO, or whatever happens to be the new fad of
the day. Here’s a revealing data point: more than 38 million Americans admit to
shopping on their smartphones while sitting on the toilet. Folks, I’d say we’ve got
ourselves a problem.
And it’s not just the computers in our pockets that meddle with our
mindfulness; our own minds contribute just as much. When Langer’s Harvard
colleagues Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert tracked 2,000 people’s real-
time thoughts as they went about their daily lives, they found that whether
working, watching television, taking care of their children, running errands, or
doing almost anything else, nearly half reported being distracted with other
thoughts than what they were currently experiencing. In fact, for 21 out of the 22
activities they tracked, no fewer than 30 percent of participants reported thinking
about other things, like the past, the future, and life’s “what ifs.” (The one
exception, rather unsurprisingly, was sex.)
So what toll, exactly, does mindlessness take on us, and in particular on our
ability to be self-aware? For one, Langer’s research has found that distraction
decreases happiness. What’s more, we lose the ability to monitor and control our
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors—and this makes self-awareness virtually
impossible. In one study, researchers asked dieters to either watch a distracting
video clip of bighorn sheep or watch themselves on video for 10 minutes. Then,
they were allowed to eat as much ice cream as they wanted. Who went hog wild?
The distracted dieters, of course. When their attention was pulled away from their
actions, they were less aware and in control. This principle holds whether we are
eating ice cream, responding to a difficult situation with a co-worker, making a
critical career decision, or anything else. Luckily, when practiced correctly,
mindfulness is a rather straightforward antidote to this problem. Let’s start with
the more mainstream view of this approach.
As a walking prototype of distraction, I knew I’d be a fish out of water at the
Shambhala Mountain Center. It was for this precise reason that I’d roped in my
younger sister and token family unicorn. And rather conveniently, Abby had
recently become a passionate advocate of meditation.
But precisely 24 hours after my sister “guaranteed” that I’d be “loving” the
meditation course, I was trying to decide between laughing hysterically and
running away screaming. Picture a group of 20 adults in a completely silent room
walking in circles, very, very slowly. Our shoulders were hunched over, our hands
(for reasons that were never fully explained) placed in a highly specific position,
one balled into a fist with its thumb sticking up and the other curled around it,
and both pressed into our stomachs just beneath our belly button.
Everyone was taking this walking meditation extremely seriously—at least,
everyone besides me. We paced, heel-toe, heel-toe, heel-toe, around and around,
for what was allegedly 20 minutes but seemed like two hours. All I could think of
were the people I grew up secretly chuckling at, who often lived in Boulder,
Colorado, and had super-earnest, super-annoying levels of commitment to their
alternative lifestyles. I didn’t want to become one of them!
But I was also determined to see the weekend through. As a scientist, I’ve been
trained to follow the data wherever they lead, and to my great irritation, the
results on mindfulness meditation are clear and compelling. Research shows that
people who practice it are happier, healthier, more creative, more productive,
more authentic, more in control of their behavior, more satisfied in their
marriages, more relaxed, less aggressive, less burnt-out, and even thinner. So as
ridiculous as I felt, I was at least self-aware enough to know that my biases were
irrationally influencing my opinion about something I had never even tried.
Plus, I was on deadline for my book (this one), and this retreat was an
important piece of my research on self-awareness. There’s a growing body of
evidence that mindfulness meditation can save us from the traps of introspection
and rumination you read about in the last chapter. In one study, when researchers
put people who had never meditated through a 10-day intensive mindfulness
training retreat, the subjects were less likely to introspect compared to a control
group, both immediately afterward and weeks later. In contrast, the control
group’s introspection levels actually increased. Participants trained in mindfulness
were also less depressed and less upset, and they even had better memories and
attention spans.
Although the direct connection between mindfulness and self-awareness is just
beginning to be understood, initial research is telling. One investigation of mental
health professionals showed that the more mindful among them also tended to
enjoy greater self-insight. Some researchers have even suggested that the reason
mindfulness reduces stress, anxiety, and depression is because it increases insight.
Of course, mindfulness on its own is not sufficient for complete self-awareness
—after all, to truly know ourselves, we need to delve a bit deeper—but it does
help us notice and control our reactions while avoiding the follies of
introspection. When we’re mindful, we experience our emotions without
overthinking or overreacting, and we remember that the way we feel now isn’t the
way we’ll feel forever. As Dr. Megan Warner, associate clinical professor in the
Yale School of Medicine’s psychiatry department, explains, “Mindfulness offers a
strategy to disconnect from where our thoughts, emotions and pain can take us.”
Mindfulness meditation can also create real impact in the hard-nosed world of
business. Mark Tercek witnessed this firsthand soon after being appointed
president and CEO of the Nature Conservancy. Coming from a successful career
as a managing director and partner at Goldman Sachs, he thought he’d escaped
the high-pressure life when he left Wall Street. Yet Mark found himself facing
some tough decisions in the early months of his new job, which he began right at
the start of the 2008 financial crisis. But even after the Nature Conservancy had
weathered the storm, Mark still sensed that something was a bit off for him both
professionally and personally. So he called our mutual friend Marshall Goldsmith,
one of the world’s top executive coaches, for help. Marshall interviewed Mark’s
executive team, his board, and even his family. Apparently, Mark’s hard-charging
style had been ruffling a few feathers at work, and some of that was following
him home.
Mark was surprised. Even though things had been tough, he hadn’t fully
realized how much his tendency to make quick, impulse-driven decisions was
affecting others. With Marshall’s help, Mark vowed to work on three things: to be
a better listener, to embrace a more positive mindset, and to stop sweating the
small stuff. Things got a bit better in the months that followed, but not as much as
Mark had hoped. Despite Marshall’s support and Mark’s commitment, Mark
wasn’t sure how to push past this plateau.
Around that same time, Mark became interested in mindfulness. He’d start
each day with 10 minutes of meditation; and if he couldn’t wake up early, he’d
steal away to his office to focus on his breath and get in a more positive frame of
mind. With each passing day, not only did Mark begin to feel happier and calmer,
it didn’t take long for him to notice a few more unexpected benefits. On the days
he meditated, he found himself making measurable progress toward the goals
he’d set with Marshall: he was pushing past that plateau that had seemed
insurmountable just weeks earlier.
Soon, Mark realized that he could better recognize—in the moment—when he
needed to override his gut and make a different choice. He was better able to stop
and listen. He was less reactive, critical, and defensive. He was finally in control
of the pillar of reactions. Mark was also pleased with the difference this relatively
small daily ritual was making at home. On days he’d meditated, his kids would
say, “Dad, what happened? You’re so nice now!” “Hey, be careful,” he’d playfully
joke. “No, Dad, you were nice before,” they would tactfully answer, “but now
you’re really nice.”
Mark realized what researchers also know to be true: because mindfulness
helps us be more aware of our thoughts and feelings, we can better control our
behavior and make smarter decisions in real time. And though mindfulness is
much loved by those seeking internal self-awareness, it also has surprising
benefits for external self-awareness; by quieting our egos, we become more open
to feedback from others.
Psychology professor Whitney Heppner and her colleagues discovered this
effect through a rather creative experiment. They asked students to write an essay
about themselves, which would supposedly be used by other participants as the
basis for choosing a partner for a subsequent computer task. One-third of the
students were told they had been chosen by another participant (the acceptance
group), one-third were told that no one had chosen them (the rejection group,
essentially the equivalent of being the last person picked in gym class), and onethird were asked to mindfully eat five raisins prior to learning that they hadn’t
been chosen by another participant (the mindfulness-rejection group).
*2
During the computer task, the researchers gave participants the choice to blast
as much noise as they wanted at their competitors. They predicted that the
rejected participants would be angrier and therefore aggressively punish the
people who hadn’t picked them. This is exactly what happened, at least for the
non-mindful rejection group. Yet even though the mindfulness-rejection group
had been equally shunned, they were two-thirds less aggressive—in fact, their
reactions were statistically indistinguishable from the acceptance group.
Mindfulness seemed to have guarded against the defensiveness and anger that can
accompany critical feedback or perceived failure. After all, even though it’s
important to understand how other people see us, those views don’t completely
define who we are.
MINDFULNESS WITHOUT THE MANTRAS
We’ve seen that mindfulness meditation can produce some pretty dramatic
improvements in self-awareness and well-being. But remember, mindfulness has
a broader definition than just meditation. So if you are as ambivalent about
meditation as I was, you’ll be pleased to learn that there are many scientifically
supported mindfulness methods that don’t require a single mantra. For example, a
few non-meditative unicorns reported that simply spending time outdoors—
things like hiking, running, biking, or going for a long walk—helped them stay
focused on the present. A few even believed that these activities were among the
most important tools in their ongoing self-awareness—sometimes just a few
minutes of true quiet can do wonders for putting us back in touch with our
thoughts and feelings. And although just writing about the following activity
gives me anxiety, many unicorns achieved this quiet by shutting off their phones
during certain parts of their day—most consistently in the evenings and early
mornings. Other unicorns reported finding a similar peace through prayer.
Before we move to a few non-meditative mindfulness tools, an important point
is in order. Mindfulness is not the same thing as relaxation. In fact, even
though these two activities seem similar, their outcomes couldn’t be more
different. In one study, unemployed men and women either went through a threeday mindfulness meditation program or a three-day relaxation program disguised
as a mindfulness one. Both groups engaged in many of the same activities, but
only the first program employed real mindfulness techniques. For example, both
incorporated stretching—but where the relaxation group was encouraged to chat
with one another during those exercises, the mindful group was instructed to pay
attention to their bodily sensations, even unpleasant ones.
At the end of the three days, both groups felt equally refreshed and better able
to manage the stress of the job-seeking process. But when the researchers
scanned their brains, their MRI results told a different story: only the mindfulness
group was actually more focused and calm. And four months later, when
researchers measured participants’ interleukin 6 levels (an indication of
inflammation, which is a sign of stress), the relaxation group’s levels had
increased more than 20 percent while the mindfulness group’s decreased by the
same amount. The lesson here? Whatever you do to center yourself, make sure
you spend that time actively noticing new things rather than just mentally
checking out.
Now, to understand how to practice non-meditative mindfulness, it might be
helpful to re-review Ellen Langer’s definition. The process of drawing novel
distinctions is, according to Langer, “the essence of mindfulness.” But what does
it mean to draw novel distinctions? In a nutshell, it’s seeing ourselves and our
world in a new way. Langer gives the example of traveling. When we’re in a
strange place, we tend to notice new things in ourselves and the world around us
—the sights, the sounds, the people—versus our day-to-day lives, where we tend
to focus on the familiar and draw on the perspective we’ve always had. But we
don’t need to travel to far-off lands to experience these benefits. If we can get in
the habit of mindfully noticing new things in ourselves or our world, it can
dramatically improve our self-knowledge.
One way to do this is reframing, which simply means looking at our
circumstances, our behaviors, and our relationships from a new and different
angle. Let’s look at the story of Aviana, a unicorn, mother of two, and manager in
the wireless telecommunications industry whose courage in reframing her
circumstances was a major force in achieving greater self-knowledge; it even
played a role in saving her career. A few weeks after giving birth to her youngest
son, she received devastating news. The call center where she worked—no, loved
to work—for the past 11 years would be closing, and everyone, including her,
would be out of a job. Worse yet, because her husband worked there too, her
family was about to go from two incomes to zero literally overnight.
Aviana was panicked and afraid. She would lie awake at night staring at the
ceiling thinking, What am I going to do? She decided to return early from her
maternity leave for the simple purpose of stockpiling as much cash as possible.
But back at the office, her co-workers’ reactions didn’t help her state of mind.
“Isn’t this horrible?” they’d whine. After a few days of letting everyone get her
even more lathered up, Aviana wondered whether there was another way of
looking at the situation. Instead of focusing on what I’m losing, she pondered,
what if I focused on what I might gain? Yes, she was losing her job, but this also
could be an opportunity to grow, and maybe even to get a better job than the one
she had.
Armed with this new perspective, Aviana quickly realized something that
should have been obvious to her before. Right out of high school, she’d taken a
few semesters of college courses, but when they failed to hold her attention, she
left to explore the working world and never looked back. That had been a
mistake, she realized, and this was her chance to make it right—and in fact, if she
didn’t go back to school, she’d be seriously hurting her long-term job prospects.
So, 11 years after her first attempt, Aviana re-enrolled in an online undergraduate
program while simultaneously applying for other jobs in the company.
Before she knew it, her last day of work arrived. That afternoon, she learned
that a co-worker was organizing a happy hour, which seemed fun but dangerous
given everyone’s freshly deposited severance checks. She handed in her badge
and was about to head to the bar when her phone rang. It was the hiring manager
calling about one of her company’s open positions! Before the manager had even
finished offering her the job, Aviana exclaimed, “I’ll take it! And I can start
Monday!”
The new position was a breath of fresh air and a net win for her career. Since
then, Aviana has received two promotions. And thanks to her company’s tuitionreimbursement program, she’s close to finishing her degree in organizational
leadership.
Aviana’s flexibility in reframing the loss of her job as an opportunity—rather
than staying mired in a mindset of helplessness—dramatically improved both her
career and her life. But interestingly, reframing isn’t just helpful when things go
wrong. Quite often, we gain valuable perspective by reframing when things are
going right. Earlier, I mentioned my friend whose husband left her for what, to
her, seemed like completely out-of-the-blue reasons. If she had thought “My
marriage seems to be doing really well right now—but what if it weren’t?” she
might have stumbled upon some of the issues before it was too late. I’m certainly
not suggesting that you become a giant bummer to yourself and others—what I
am suggesting is that looking at both the good and the bad from multiple
angles will help you maximize your insight and success.
When in a difficult situation, ask: What opportunities can I find? What about
my weaknesses could be strengths? When I look back on my life or career, what
successes have I had in my most trying situations? What is one gift I’ve gotten
from my most challenging personal or professional relationship?
By the same token, when things are going well, you might ask: What are the
potential risks and how can I avoid them? What aspects of my strengths could
become weaknesses? What potential challenges can I find in my past successes?
What is one risk in my best personal or professional relationship, and how can I
mitigate it?
If you’re a theater geek like I am, you probably know that characters in plays
sometimes step out of the action to speak directly to the audience or observe a
scene. As many of our unicorns showed us, we can use this same technique to
gain valuable insight by reframing our experiences from a more objective
angle. One unicorn explained that when she and her husband are having a
disagreement, she mentally steps outside of herself to “watch” what’s going on—
so instead of being an angry spouse, she becomes an observer. (This might
remind you of perspective-taking; but while perspective-taking is about putting
yourself in others’ shoes, this is about observing things from a more detached,
objective angle.) Negotiation expert William Ury aptly calls it “going to the
balcony,” but whatever name it goes by, this kind of reframing can be immensely
valuable.
Our second non-meditative mindfulness tool is comparing and contrasting.
When we compare and contrast, we’re looking for similarities and differences
between our experiences, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors over time. In
particular, this can be a great way to see patterns (one of the Seven Pillars of
Insight) that we might not have picked up on in the past. But, you might be
wondering, if mindfulness is about noticing the present, how does examining our
past help? Because comparing and contrasting past experiences to what is
happening right now can give us immense clarity about the present. For example,
“I was so happy with my job last week—what’s different this week that’s making
me so miserable?” or “When I chose my major in college, it seems like I got the
most excited in my business-related classes than anything else. Am I tapping into
that same passion in my current job?” or “If I’ve had the same challenges across
multiple jobs, what might this mean?”
Personally, I am indebted to the compare-and-contrast tool for the single most
important “aha moment” of my career. I spent the first five years after college in
an academic setting, working as a researcher and adjunct instructor while earning
my PhD. But being a businessperson at heart, I also took on whatever consulting
gigs I could—first under the supervision of my graduate professors and then as a
consultant with a small firm in Denver. After I finished school, and having fallen
in love with the business world, I held a series of corporate roles as an in-house
organizational psychologist. Eventually, I scored what I thought was my dream
job—I worked for an incredible company with a team I adored and a boss who
essentially gave me free rein to do whatever I thought was most helpful for the
company.
But less than two years later, a feeling of restlessness began to set in. At first, I
pushed away these feelings, telling myself I was being ungrateful for the
opportunity. But despite my best efforts, the restlessness grew to the point where
I could no longer ignore it.
One evening, I was discussing this predicament with my husband. “If memory
serves,” he offered, “you felt pretty much the same way in your last job right
around year two.” I hadn’t noticed it myself, but he was right. What I was
experiencing wasn’t unhappiness per se—instead, I felt trapped in the predictable
routine of the people, the projects, and the politics. Often on the way to work, a
feeling of dread would wash over me as I took the same route to the same office
at the same time as I had the day before.
Did I experience this, I wondered, earlier in my career? I couldn’t remember
having that feeling when I was teaching and consulting; because every new
semester, new class, and new client was a clean slate, I never got too settled into a
routine. It was also pretty clear that I had been much happier working for myself
than when I was working for someone else. (This makes perfect sense in
hindsight: I come from a long line of entrepreneurs who don’t like being told what
to do.) But I’d never asked myself these questions in this way before. And though
the answers weren’t as convenient as I would have liked, they gave me a whole
new level of clarity.
Never one to act impulsively, I decided to let these rather unsettling
conclusions bounce around my head for a few weeks. Then one night as I was
walking from my office to my car, the answer hit me like a punch in the gut. I
had to start my own company—period, full stop. And I had to do it soon, lest I
wake up in my 50s, still wondering why I couldn’t muster the courage to take the
plunge. Despite the rather uncomfortable nature of this realization, I felt a great
sense of relief and purpose. It wasn’t easy to leave the cushy corporate world, but
I can honestly say that I never imagined I could enjoy my job as much as I do
now. And I can trace this trajectory directly to the few weeks I spent comparing
and contrasting the high and low points of my career.
The compare-and-contrast tool isn’t just well suited for professional
epiphanies; it can also help us discover patterns that are holding us back in our
personal lives. Take Jed, a single 66-year-old computer programmer (and
unicorn) who had just been given, in his words, “a really long paid vacation.”
When his company went through a large downsizing, they offered him a
retirement package, which, coupled with his fortuitous social security eligibility,
meant that he could finally take some time off. Early one morning a few months
into his vacation, he had just awoken and was staring bleary-eyed at the ceiling. It
seemed that Jed’s new life had come with an unpleasant (yet ultimately positive)
side effect: free time to confront the things in his life that dissatisfied him—for
one, the fact that he was still single. But instead of ruminating, he began to ask
himself if there was a common factor in his failed relationships.
At the time, Jed was just finishing Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. (He’d decided
that his sabbatical afforded him the opportunity to read some of the classic novels
he had overlooked in his youth.) In Madame Bovary, Dr. Charles Bovary marries
Emma, the daughter of one of his patients. At first, Emma is thrilled to be
married to Charles, but she quickly becomes bored with him—and (spoiler alert)
becomes so upset about it that she literally dies. One passage caught Jed’s
attention:
But how to speak about so elusive a malaise, one that keeps
changing its shape like the clouds and its direction like the winds?
She could find no words; and hence neither occasion nor courage
came to hand…Charles’s conversation was flat as a sidewalk, a place
of passage for ideas of everyman; they wore drab everyday clothes,
and they inspired neither laughter nor dreams.
When he read this, something clicked. Could the common factor in my
relationships be ME? Jed wondered. Could I be as flat as a sidewalk? To discover
the answer, he searched for the similarities in his behavior throughout his past
relationships (specifically, the pillars of patterns, reactions, and impact). In a
flash of insight, Jed realized that in every relationship, he’d held in his emotions
too much. When something would upset him, he wouldn’t say or do anything; he’d
just shut down. This denial, Jed realized, “flattened” him, blocking any kind of
deeper connection.
Right around that time, he had reconnected with an old friend he’d known for
20 years but with whom he’d been out of touch for the last 10. They started
taking dancing lessons together, and lo and behold, a romance blossomed. They
were married a year later, and Jed has made it a point to show up differently in
this relationship. If something happened that he wasn’t thrilled about, for
example, the old Jed would have sat on it in silence, but the new Jed knew he
needed to be more open with his feelings, even if it was difficult or
uncomfortable. His marriage isn’t perfect (whose is?) but he’s never been happier.
If you want to try comparing and contrasting for yourself, here are a few
questions to get you started. You can apply each one to almost anything that you
want to better understand, such as your job, your career, or your relationships.
What about X is the same and what is different than it was in the past? Have
there been any patterns in my mood, positive or negative, that have coincided
with changes in X? Does the way I feel about X remind me of any similar
feelings I’ve had about a past situation? How happy or fulfilled am I with X today
versus how I felt about X in the past? When I think about X over the course of
my life, have things gotten better or worse?
Now let’s turn to our final mindfulness tool. Studies have shown that one
reason we fail to learn from experience is that we rarely take time to reflect on
our discoveries. Finding the time to regularly check in with ourselves can feel
surprisingly difficult in our busy, distracted world. But daily check-ins don’t have
to be time-consuming (as with journaling, more is not better). In fact, the
majority of our unicorns described a habit of short, focused check-ins (just as
Ben Franklin did). When explaining his process, Jeff, our architect-turnedentrepreneur, reported: “I take the perspective of a critical outsider and ask, ‘How
did I do today and how do I feel about how today went?’ ”
Instead of using the time to introspect—or worse, ruminate—we should use
daily check-ins to review the choices we made that day, look for patterns, and
observe what worked and what didn’t. This small ritual can have a big impact, not
just on our mood and our confidence, but on our actions and results. For
example, in one study, call-center trainees who took just a few minutes to reflect
at the end of each day improved their performance an average of 23 percent.
So try taking five minutes every evening—whether it’s during your drive home,
while unwinding after dinner, or after you climb into bed—to mindfully ask
yourself: What went well today? What didn’t go well? What did I learn and
how will I be smarter tomorrow? The answers you unearth need not be lifealtering—quite often, even insights that seem insignificant at the time can help us
improve incrementally. But if we can get just a bit more mindful and self-aware
each day, the sum total effect of these insights can be astonishing.
YOUR LIFE STORY: CHART THE CONSTELLATION, DON’T JUST
GAZE AT THE STAR
My husband just so happens to be a giant nerd, which is precisely why I married
him. By day, he geeks out as an IT systems architect at an engineering firm, and
by night, among other things, he geeks out about astronomy. A few years ago, he
decided his hobby had become serious enough that it required an equally serious
telescope. Due to the hefty price tag of such a piece of equipment, he formed a
coalition of eight or so family members who each contributed to what would soon
come to be known as the Best Birthday Present Ever. Every time he uses his
favorite possession, he performs an evening-long ritual of setting it up, getting it
configured, sometimes attaching a camera to it, looking at what times different
objects are in the sky, and so on. Then, with childlike delight, he will spend hours
on our rooftop deck looking at the red spot on Jupiter, or a certain crater on the
moon, or the rings of Saturn.
One weekend, we were up at our cabin in the Colorado mountains. It was a
crisp, clear night, and I figured the telescope would be coming out at any
moment. When I heard the back door slam shut, I prepared myself for the
inevitable “Hey, come look at this!” that I’d soon be hearing from our back deck.
After a while, having heard no such exclamation, I decided to go out and check
on him. I was surprised to find my husband just sitting there, staring up at the sky
with the telescope still in its carrying case next to him.
“Is your telescope broken?” I asked in horror.
Chuckling, he reassured me that it wasn’t. “Once I got out here and my eyes
adjusted,” he explained, “I started looking at all the constellations—do you see
how beautiful the Milky Way is tonight?” Still sensing my confusion, he opined,
“Sometimes it’s really nice to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.”
The same is true for self-examination. If the mindfulness tools you just read
about will help you understand your present self, the Life Story approach helps
you look backward to learn how the sum total of your past has shaped you.
If each life event is a star, our life story is the constellation. And if we spent all of
our time looking at individual stars through a telescope lens, we couldn’t
appreciate the magnitude and beauty of the constellations that dot the sky. To that
end, the process of becoming, as Timothy Wilson describes it, “biographers of
our lives” is a profoundly powerful but surprisingly underutilized approach to
better understand who we are, who we are becoming, and who we could be.
Psychology professor Dan McAdams has been prolifically researching life
stories for more than 30 years. The approach that McAdams and his colleagues
use to help people compose their life stories goes something like this:
Think about your life as if it were a book. Divide that book into
chapters that represent the key phases of your life. Within those
phases, think of 5–10 specific scenes in your story—high points, low
points, turning points, early memories, important childhood events,
important adulthood events, or any other event you find selfdefining. For each, provide an account that is at least one paragraph
long:
1. What happened and when? Who was involved?
2. What were you and others thinking and feeling, and what about this event
was especially important for you?
3. What does this event say about who you are, how you have developed
over time, or who you might become?
When you are finished writing your account, take a step back and
look at your life story as a whole:
1. What major themes, feelings, or lessons do you see in your story?
2. What does the story of your life say about the kind of person you are and
might become?
3. What does your story say about your values, passions, aspirations, fit,
patterns, reactions, and impact on others?
After collecting life stories from tens of thousands of people, Professor
McAdams and his colleagues have learned that they usually have overarching
themes. And identifying them can help make sense of seemingly contradictory
aspects of ourselves. Take the example of Chase, an introverted non-profit
fundraiser who loves his work. His pattern of introversion and passion for a job
that requires him to frequently schmooze might seem incongruous at first. But
when Chase examines his life story, he notices that every high point has involved
“doing good” for someone who was less fortunate. So even though his job
requires more mixing and mingling than an introvert might usually prefer, it
allows him to live his most important value: helping others. And if that involves a
little socializing, Chase is happy to do it.
Let’s look at a few specific ways to become a biographer of your life in a way
that generates real insight. Research shows that self-aware people tend to knit
more complex narratives of their key life events: they are more likely to describe
each event from different perspectives, include multiple explanations, and
explore complex and even contradictory emotions. In many ways, this complexity
is the opposite of the need for absolute truth that we learned about in the last
chapter: instead of searching for simple, generalizable facts, self-aware people
appreciate the complicated nature of the key events in their lives. Perhaps for this
reason, complex life stories are associated with continued personal growth and
maturity years into the future.
At the same time, we also want to seek something called thematic coherence.
When we’re able to find consistent themes across multiple important events of
our lives, we can glean surprising self-insights—like how Chase discovered his
theme of doing good. Some common themes include achievement (i.e., personal
success), relationships (i.e., forming and keeping connections with others), and
growth (i.e., seeing life as an opportunity to develop and improve). Another
especially interesting life-story theme is one that McAdams has focused on for
much of his career: the theme of redemption. Whereas people with
“contamination sequences” see a pattern of good things turning to bad ones,
people with “redemption sequences” believe that bad things can turn to good.
Self-awareness researcher Timothy Wilson and his colleagues demonstrated
the power of the redemption sequence when they studied freshmen at Duke
University who were struggling with their grades. Clearly, the students’ poor
academic performance was powerfully challenging their “good student, great
school, bright future” narrative. Wilson and his team divided the students into two
groups: one watched videos of upperclassmen explaining how their grades
improved after they adjusted to college life—that is, the freshmen heard a new
narrative, one that provided an alternate explanation for their struggles. A second
group was not given a new narrative. The effects were dramatic: after one year,
the “new-narrative” students had improved their GPAs by an average of .11
(compared to the “old-narrative” students, whose GPAs dropped slightly), and
were far less likely to drop out (a mere 5 percent of the new-narrative students
threw in the towel versus 25 percent of the others).
One particularly moving example of a redemption sequence involves a young
man from one of McAdams’ studies—let’s call him James—whose life has been
fraught with hardship. Entering the world as a product of rape, James faced
challenge after challenge, including a near-death experience after being stabbed.
But where many would see only darkness and despair, James sees hope: “I was
dead, but the doctors brought me back….My philosophy of life has always been
to be positive instead of negative on any circumstances you deal with. If you go
with the positive ideas, you’ll progress. If you get involved in the negative, you’ll
drown.” It would be easy to label James as overly optimistic. But the research on
people like him paints a clear picture: if we view our challenges accurately and as
an opportunity for redemption, even the most horrific experiences can help us
learn, grow, and improve.
So when the time is right for you to write your life story, don’t look at it as a
neat, clean Hollywood narrative. Embracing the complexity, the nuances, and the
contradictions will help you appreciate your inner reality in all its beautiful
messiness.
SOLUTIONS-MINING: FROM PROBLEMS TO GROWTH GOALS
So far in this chapter, we’ve explored tools to help us better understand our
present (mindfulness, both meditative and non-meditative) and our past (life
stories). At this point, then, one important topic remains: How can we become
more internally self-aware and successful in the future? Or as one unicorn noted,
“It’s not enough to know yourself. You have to set goals and make changes to
really live the life you want.” Quite often, the commitment to the process of selfdiscovery unearths disparities between where we are and where we want or need
to be in the future. Let’s say that after some mindful comparing and contrasting,
you realize that the company you work at isn’t a good fit for you. Or perhaps
charting your life story reveals the importance of family in your life, but your
current 80-hour workweeks aren’t in line with that value. Quite often, whether
we choose to act on our newfound self-insight is the difference between
success and stagnation.
Matt, for example, was a bright, ambitious financial services professional—in
addition to being a fountain of industry knowledge, he had earned accolades from
bosses, peers, and clients throughout his career for his diligent, disciplined
approach. When I first met him, I was running his company’s high-potential
development program, into which he’d just been accepted. I could see that
potential instantly.
Matt had recently been hired as a long-term successor for the role of business
unit president. The plan, the company’s CEO told me, was for Matt to spend the
next three or so years working for the president and learning the ropes, followed
by a smooth and successful transition into the role when the president retired.
But, as is often the case, things didn’t go as planned. A year into Matt’s tenure, his
boss had a sudden health crisis and had to leave the company. The CEO made the
decision not to hire from the outside to replace him, at least for now, which left
the door open for Matt.
But as much as the CEO wanted to appoint his new high-potential hire to the
role, he wasn’t sure Matt was ready. This left Matt in a rather awkward position:
his mentor was gone, no one had been appointed to run the group, and someone
was going to have to step in and fill the leadership vacuum. Matt approached the
CEO and offered to fill in until they could find a more permanent solution, and
he agreed. Matt knew he’d feel some growing pains: in addition to facing the
same challenges every leader faces, like motivating his team, managing
performance, and delivering results, he had the added complication of being an
unofficial boss to some of his current peers. But rather than get discouraged, Matt
decided it was the perfect opportunity to turn his problems into solutions—that is,
he set a goal to develop the skills he’d need to earn the permanent job.
Most people instinctively know that when faced with a challenge, finding
solutions is the most productive choice—which might explain why bosses enjoy
barking adages like “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions!”—but
particularly in the business world, we still spend inordinate amounts of time
focused on problems and comparatively little on how to fix them. Yet not only
does focusing on solutions—a technique called solutions-mining—help us reach
our goals in record time; it has the surprising benefit of helping us think less but
understand more. For example, in one study, participants completed a threemonth life-coaching program that focused on setting goals and measuring their
progress toward them. Not only did the program help participants reach their
goals in record time, they showed less introspection and more self-awareness.
Another study demonstrated that people sustained this progress nearly eight
months later. As an added bonus, solutions-mining is a powerful antidote to
rumination.
The data on solutions-mining are so compelling that the field of psychology has
formed an entire discipline based on the premise that focusing on them can
produce insight, well-being, and success. Developed in the 1980s by married
couple Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg, an approach called Solutions
Focused Brief Therapy has produced dramatic improvements in things like
depression, recidivism, stress and crisis management, and psychological and
social functioning in populations such as parents, prisoners, adolescents with
behavior problems, healthcare workers, and couples struggling with their
marriages. And for our purposes, the approach has also been associated with
greater insight and psychological growth.
If you want to increase your ability to mine problems for solutions, a simple
but powerful tool is the Miracle Question (you might recognize it from Chip and
Dan Heath’s book Switch). Developed by de Shazer and Berg, the Miracle
Question produces insight everywhere from the workplace to our home life to the
therapist’s couch; it’s even been shown to help golfers reduce their putting yips
(i.e., jerks in their putting stroke). So what is the Miracle Question, exactly?
Imagine that tonight as you sleep a miracle occurs in your life. A
magical momentous happening has completely solved this problem
and perhaps rippled out to cover and infinitely improve other areas
of your life too…Think for a moment…how is life going to be
different now? Describe it in detail. What’s the first thing you’ll
notice as you wake up in the morning?
Let’s circle back to Matt. After getting feedback from his team that his biggest
problem was delegation, he used the Miracle Question to explore what the
solution might look like. If Matt’s problem were magically solved, he thought, the
first sign would be that he’d no longer see asking for help as a weakness. Instead,
he would embrace it as a method for greater team involvement, improvement,
and prosperity.
Matt proceeded to paint a poignant picture of his desired future when the
problem was solved (or, as the Heath brothers call it in Switch, a “destination
postcard”). One where he would improve his team’s engagement and
performance, all while feeling less burdened and more efficient. But notice that
Matt’s solution wasn’t an oversimplified single action (“I’ll do a better job
delegating”). Instead, he envisioned exactly how both he and his employees would
change on a far deeper level.
And indeed, part of the reason that the Miracle Question can be so effective is
that it forces us to think more broadly about our aspirations, a key pillar in our
self-awareness journey. One unicorn we spoke to echoed this. Emily grew up as
one of eight children in a family that struggled to make ends meet. Determined
not to repeat her family’s mistakes, she channeled her difficult childhood into
motivation to succeed in her career.
Self-awareness can’t happen without goals. I define what I need to
accomplish—for example, when I was new to my company, I
needed to build strong relationships and establish credibility. The
only way to do that was to earn my team’s trust and develop their
confidence in me. Any missteps would get me in trouble. So I had to
constantly ask myself, How will this action impact my goal?
But when it comes to improving our internal self-awareness, all goals aren’t
created equal. And just like Carol Dweck and Carol Diener’s learn-well kids,
when we express our goals in terms of how we will learn and grow, it opens
us up to a whole new level of insight and achievement. In one study, college
students were asked to write two paragraphs about a major life goal and how they
were trying to accomplish it. Interestingly, when the students described goals
involving learning and growth, they demonstrated improved self-awareness,
maturity, and well-being nearly four years later.
*3
In Matt’s case, instead of simply vowing to delegate more effectively, he was
able to change the way he operated on a deeper level by conquering his fear of
asking for help and taking action to inspire and empower his team. For the next
several months, Matt continued to work on the skills he’d need to succeed as
president, should he be given the opportunity. Eventually, the CEO formally
promoted him. Now, more than a year later, Matt continues to exceed
expectations. He is a powerful reminder that the sooner we can explore how our
challenges can lead to growth, the easier it is to take charge and get what we want
out of life.
At this point, you might be wondering how my maiden voyage into the world of
mindfulness ended, and whether I lived to tell the tale. On the final day of the
meditation course, our group took a long trek through the snow to the Great Stupa
of Dharmakaya. As we crossed an elegant wooden bridge strung with colorful
prayer flags, I looked up to see it towering above us—two huge white arches
topped with a cone of shining gold, all set in a natural amphitheater of snowy
pines. I was surprisingly moved.
After a few awe-inspiring minutes experiencing the breathtaking sight from
afar, we took off our shoes and winter jackets and entered the shrine. “Oh wow,”
I whispered to Abby as we walked in—and craned our necks to take in a towering
golden Buddha beneath an intricately painted ceiling of azure blue.
I was surprised to find myself thinking, “I really hope we get to meditate in
here.”
When we did, I finally got it. And no one was more surprised than me. It was
as if all weekend, my mind had been a glass of water with dirt swirling around
inside it and now, for a few awesome minutes, it was clear. My anxious, Type A,
overthinking brain had stopped running at a million miles an hour and was now
perfectly calm. In that moment, I understood what all the fuss was about.
On the drive back from Shambhala, I felt happy just to sit in serene silence
with my sister—something that had never happened before. There was no need, I
realized with a kind of fascinated delight, to fill every second with incessant
babble or music. As Abby and I descended from that magical space back into the
noisy city, I considered buying myself a meditation cushion and converting half
my office into a mindfulness mecca.
The day after my return, with great gusto, I sat and meditated. The day after
that, I sat and meditated (though my emotionally needy five-pound rescue poodle
made the entire affair pretty difficult). But the day after that, I didn’t sit and
meditate. Or the day after that. The day after that, I thought maybe I’d delay my
office conversion for a while. I’ll admit that I haven’t meditated since—not
because I didn’t see the possibility of what it could do, but because I find that
non-meditative techniques just work better for me.
The point is that there are many ways to approach internal self-awareness—life
stories for probing our past, meditative and non-meditative mindfulness for
noticing our present, and solutions-mining for shaping our future. Though it’s
worth trying each of them at some point, you may find that certain tools work
better than others. After all, part of building insight is learning what methods of
self-exploration work best for you.
*1 It might be helpful to point out that the participants were equally displeased regardless of
age, education, income, or social media use.
*2 In case you’re wondering, mindfully eating a raisin goes something like this: “Imagine that
you have never seen a raisin before…next rub the raisin gently across your lips, noticing how
it feels against them. Now, put the raisin in your mouth, and roll it around slowly on your
tongue…take a very small bite…now chew the raisin slowly…” and so on.
*3 And if you’re a fan of the TV show 24, you might be interested to know that the first author
of this study was…wait for it…Jack Bauer.

A stranger approaching you in the street will in a second’s glance see
you whole, size you up, place you in a way in which you cannot and
never will, even though you have spent a lifetime with yourself…and
therefore ought to know yourself best of all.
—WALKER PERCY
There’s an old science-backed adage that the words of a drunk person are the
thoughts of a sober one. Late one Saturday night in a crowded hometown bar, I
recently learned just how true this really is.
It all began, innocently enough, in a trendy restaurant in downtown Denver. My
husband and I, along with six of his oldest friends, had just had a magnificent
meal with a surplus of food and wine. Despite the fact that I (as designated
driver) had been soberly sipping club soda, I was in a wonderful mood. I’d known
everyone around the table for more than 10 years, and it was just one of those
nights when everything clicked. My friends were at their witty best and my
stomach was sore from laughing. When the check came, we decided we were
having far too much fun to go home.
“What about the Celtic?” said my friend Teresa. “We haven’t been there in
forever!”
“That old Irish pub?” said my husband, wide-eyed. “I love that place!”
An hour later, my already intoxicated friends had been quickly overcome with
an even more intoxicating level of nostalgia. (The Celtic, it turned out, was where
they used to hang out more than 20 years earlier.) We pushed a few high-top
tables together, and with loud music blaring in the background, they began to
reminisce. I chuckled to myself, picturing these now buttoned-up, middle-aged
professionals engaging in youthful shenanigans.
As we broke into smaller conversations, Teresa pulled her chair closer to mine.
“Tasha,” she said dreamily, “we are so glad Dave brought you into our lives.”
How lovely! I thought, feeling equally grateful that he had brought them into
mine. But before I could respond, she continued, “And boy have you come a long
way since we first met you.”
I paused, instantly puzzled. “Wha-what do you mean?”
I’ll never forget what happened next. In the noisy ruckus of that crowded bar,
Teresa stood up, clasped my skull with her powerful hands, and then proceeded to
twist my head, agonizingly, all the way around. Well she didn’t do that, of course
—but that’s what it felt like. I’ll spare you the finer details, but apparently 26-
year-old me, a freshly minted PhD who thought she knew everything, had been
rather arrogant and high-maintenance.
“Thank you,” I sputtered. “Thanks for your candor, Teresa. How very
illuminating.”
“You’re totally welcome,” she said, beaming.
It was all I could do to stop myself from kicking her off her stool.
Once I composed myself, I recognized that this was a true alarm-clock moment
that actually presented a valuable opportunity. That opportunity, I hoped, would
be to prove that Teresa didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. But either
way, I had to probe further.
So in the car on the way home, with my very merry husband in the passenger
seat, I recounted the conversation.
“What do you think?” I asked him.
“What do you mean?”
“Is she right?”
“Um, is this a trick question?”
“No—go ahead,” I assured him, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible, “I
really want to know if you saw what Teresa saw.”
He paused for a moment and began, “Yeahhh…I can see where she’s coming
from.” I bit my tongue and took a deep breath as he continued. “I mean,
remember when you asked for a hard-walled office after you’d been in your job
for less than six months?”
“Did I?” I said, feigning ignorance.
“No, actually, you demanded it,” he said. “That seemed pretty over-the-top to
me.”
At the time, I’d been of the staunch opinion that it was totally unfair that all of
my peers had offices and I didn’t. But suddenly, I saw things from another
perspective: there I was, newly hired Dr. Smarty Pants, demanding an office like
a petulant child. Now, in retrospect, I could see how this must have come across.
And I was mortified.
For weeks, a sea of emotions swirled in my mind. Was I surprised to hear this
truth about my younger self? Absolutely. Embarrassed at my behavior? You bet I
was. But most of all, I was disappointed that no one—no one!—had said anything
to me about it for almost 10 years. Mercifully, I have apparently improved in the
intervening decade, but the fact that 26-year-old me had these tendencies is still a
red flag for present-day me. And since gaining this valuable insight, I’ve kept it in
the back of my mind, bouncing my behavior off it to be more objective about
how I might be coming across. Those drunken words had revealed one of the
most sobering truths about myself I have ever learned.
If internal self-awareness means gaining insight by looking inward, external
self-awareness means turning our gaze outward to understand how we are seen.
And no matter how hard we try, we simply cannot do this on our own.
Unfortunately, though, learning how others see us is usually thwarted by one
simple fact: even the people we’re closest to are reluctant to share such
information. We might pick up an observation here and there (with or without
the aid of lip-loosening booze), but without concerted effort to uncover it, we’re
usually not getting, as they say in the courtroom, the whole truth and nothing but
the truth.
In fact, we live in a world where people usually don’t tell us the truth about
ourselves. Stir in our uneasy reluctance to ask for it and we have a recipe for
blissful ignorance. Indeed, for many people, the mere thought of finding out how
others see us can conjure up many fears and insecurities (“You really do look fat
in those jeans” or “Your presentation was incoherent and underwhelming” or
“You were insufferably arrogant when you were 26”). Though finding out how
others see us can be scary, intimidating, or downright painful, it’s far, far better
than the alternative.
Imagine for a moment that it’s a Monday at your office. After a quick mid-
morning bathroom break, you return with a long strip of toilet paper stuck to the
bottom of your shoe, a fact to which you are completely oblivious. As you make
the long walk back to your office, your co-workers begin snickering. “Did you
see that?” they ask each other—yet to you, they say nothing. And little do they
know that you’re headed to a meeting with an important client.
When you and your unintentional accessory enter the conference room, your
client smiles bemusedly, and also stays mum. Then, despite an otherwise
successful meeting, she concludes that you’re scatterbrained and slovenly and
decides not to give you more of her business. If just one of your co-workers had
pulled you aside, you’d have been spared the whole embarrassing and costly
ordeal.
Of course, that was an intentionally ridiculous example, but the truth is that
whether it’s a gruff managerial style, poor people skills, a tendency to stutter
when nervous, or something else, we all have some kind of metaphorical toilet
paper stuck to our shoe. And more often than not, we are the last to see it.
Now, it’s rare not to wonder, at one point or another, what people are saying
about us when we leave the room. But rather than indulge this urge, most people
stubbornly cling to their blissful ignorance. Since no one has told me otherwise, we
decide, I must know everything I need to know about [my job performance/my
marriage/my leadership abilities]. Of course, this instinct is understandable—as
we’ve seen, the cold hard truth can be hard to hear. But by avoiding it, we risk
two equally unappealing outcomes. The first is that we don’t learn the truth about
the behaviors that are holding us back and are doomed to walk around with
metaphorical toilet paper stuck to our shoe while people snicker behind our
backs. The second is that we do eventually learn it—through an accidentally
overheard conversation, a “come-to-Jesus moment,” or a beer-fueled admission at
a dive bar—in a way that blindsides us, or at a time when it’s too late to do
anything about what we’ve learned.
The saying that “feedback is a gift” is such a painful cliché that we often forget
how true it really is. And we need this gift for one simple reason: other people
generally see us more objectively than we see ourselves. Psychologist Timothy
Smith and his colleagues powerfully demonstrated this in a study with 300
married couples in which both partners were being tested for heart disease. They
asked each participant to rate both their own and their partner’s levels of anger,
hostility, and argumentativeness—all strong predictors of the illness—and found
that people’s self-ratings were infinitely less accurate than those of their spouses.
Another study asked more than 150 Navy officers and their subordinates to rate
the officers’ leadership style, and found that only the subordinates could
accurately assess their bosses’ performance and promotability. Other people have
even been shown to anticipate our future behavior better than we can (a fact to
which you can attest if you’ve ever met a friend’s new, obviously ill-suited love
interest and correctly predicted that the relationship wouldn’t last).
In fact, even complete strangers—that is, people we have never met face-toface—can see us disconcertingly accurately. Researcher David Funder and his
colleagues compared how undergraduates were rated by those who knew them
well (parents, friends, and roommates), those who knew them casually (college
and hometown acquaintances), and people they’d never met (strangers shown just
a five-minute video of them) on roughly 70 personality traits. The three groups’
ratings were astonishingly accurate: a match for all but three traits! The groups
also tended to see similar qualities in the participants, regardless of how well they
actually knew them. The surprising take-home is that even people you don’t
know well can be a valuable source of feedback.
Yet given all this, it’s still tempting to think that we know us better than anyone
could ever know us (after all, we live with ourselves every day, right?). To use a
metaphor from earlier in the book, when we see our reflection in a mirror, it’s
easy to conclude that this is the only, and therefore the most accurate,
representation of ourselves. It’s far easier and safer to gaze at our reflection than
face the possibility that others might not see us the same way. But gazing inward
is a necessary but not sufficient condition for true insight.
When I’m speaking to managers in organizations, I’ll often ask, “Who is
confident that your employees have the same opinion about your leadership as
you do?” About half the hands go up. So I up the ante. “Keep your hand up if
you’d bet your retirement savings on it.” At this point, I usually see a lot of
pensive looks, and most people tentatively lower their hands. But when I ask
whose opinion is “correct” (theirs or their employees’), perhaps because they want
to seem more self-aware, many confidently shout out “My employees’!”
Unfortunately, the answer isn’t that simple. Just like we can’t glean total insight
just from gazing at our own reflection, looking at ourselves only through the eyes
of others doesn’t show us the complete picture, either.
A better metaphor for complete self-awareness than a mirror might therefore
be a prism. As you may remember from elementary school science class, when
you shine a white light into a prism, it comes out the other side in the form of a
rainbow. Indeed, every time we seek a new perspective on how someone sees us,
we’re effectively adding another color to the picture. Instead of just looking at a
flat white light, we begin to see ourselves in a richer, more complete and
multidimensional way.
Jeremiah, one of our self-awareness unicorns, recently discovered how
important those other colors really are. Many of his earliest self-awareness
milestones were more internal in nature—for instance, discovering that his initial
career choice wasn’t a good match and returning to school to pursue his passion
of brand management. And though Jeremiah believed he understood himself
quite well, he didn’t realize the value of an outside perspective until he had the
opportunity to attend a coaching certification program through his company.
In his career to date, Jeremiah had always approached things—be it a business
decision, a career choice, or a conversation with a colleague—with the mentality
that he was doing them either the “right way” or the “wrong way.” But as he
learned to coach others, he saw that there was rarely one right answer. His
greatest tool in helping clients find the best path, he discovered, was
understanding how he was influencing the dynamic. If he was frustrated with a
client for talking in circles, for example, unintentionally expressing these feelings
could make her feel defensive and prevent her from doing her best thinking. And
more generally, to truly understand how he was showing up, Jeremiah realized
that he had to seek out—and value—input from others. As he told us:
When you learn what other people think of you, they’re holding up
their mirror, which may have a different reflection than your mirror.
All of our realities are a bit different, but it doesn’t mean that any
one of them is the reality.
Put simply, self-awareness is not one truth. It’s a complex interweaving of
our views and others’ views of us. Indeed, according to studies on this topic, these
two different perspectives, rather than capturing redundant information, may
simply capture different aspects of who we are. And as we learned earlier, if we
have only internal or only external self-awareness, we’re missing a huge piece of
the puzzle. So even though we should take others’ opinions seriously, they also
shouldn’t define us or completely override our self-image; the key, as we’ll see, is
learning how to evaluate the feedback we receive and determine how—and
whether—to act on it.
In this chapter, you’ll learn a few approaches to help you get honest, actionable
feedback and develop a richer picture of how you are seen by others. First, we’ll
explore the two biggest barriers to developing external self-awareness. Then I’ll
show how to tackle these obstacles using three methods to help you seek the right
kind of feedback, both at work and in your personal life.
THE MUM EFFECT (OR WHY WE LEAVE GLEN LESTER IN THE
DARK)
Imagine that you’ve been recruited to participate in a study on consumer
preferences. When you arrive in the lab, you’re mildly amused to learn that you’ll
be providing your opinions about men’s deodorant. The researcher, let’s call him
Dr. Rosen, leads you to a table with various brands, grandly announcing that
today, you’ll be evaluating each one on several factors like color and odor. Dr.
Rosen finishes explaining the task, thanks you, and leaves the room.
A few seconds later, he bursts back in and asks, “Excuse me—are you Glen
Lester?” (or if you’re a woman, “Gwen Lester”). You shake your head. Dr. Rosen
says, “Well, Glen is supposed to be here any minute. He just got a call—I’ll see if
there’s a message.” A few moments later, Dr. Rosen returns and solemnly says,
“Glen should be told to call home as soon as he comes in. Apparently there is
some very bad news about his family that he needs to get right away.” You
wonder what that news could be, feeling sympathy for this man you’ve never met
and thinking how terrible it would be to get blindsided by horrible news in public.
But here’s the million-dollar question: When Glen eventually arrives, what would
you do? Would you tell him he has an important message? And if you did, would
you tip your hand that it was in fact bad news?
This clever experiment was designed by University of Georgia psychologists
Sidney Rosen and Abraham Tesser back in 1968, and as you’ve probably
surmised, it wasn’t really about men’s deodorant preferences. What Rosen and
Tesser really wanted to know was whether people would be more reluctant to
communicate bad news than good news. And that’s exactly what they found.
When Glen’s news was good—there was a second group where participants were
told that his family had called with a positive development—more than half
eagerly spilled the beans as soon as Glen entered the room. But when the news
was bad, five times fewer people passed along the complete message. In fact,
even when “Glen” (who was really working with the researchers) prompted them
by asking what kind of news it was, a full 80 percent refused to answer his
question. Even after multiple requests, roughly a quarter never shared the nature
of the news, and poor Glen Lester was left totally in the dark.
To describe this tendency, Rosen and Tesser coined the term MUM Effect,
which stands for keeping Mum about Undesirable Messages. Their findings—
confirmed by many subsequent studies—show that when we’re in possession of
information that might make someone uncomfortable, we tend to choose the path
of least resistance: we simply decide to say nothing.
And the MUM effect doesn’t just apply to the kind of personal news people
withheld from Glen Lester. It also applies to the delivery of uncomfortable or
unwanted information about our failings or weaknesses. I recently heard about a
work group whose manager abruptly resigned. Upon learning the news, each of
his five employees fancied themselves his successor and eagerly awaited their
near-certain promotion. Not only did the promotion never come; the group’s
senior manager hired someone from the outside. Apparently, unbeknownst to all
five employees, none were doing their current jobs acceptably in the eyes of their
employer, let alone being considered for a promotion. But had the leader—or
anyone—told them? Of course not! If the employees had received feedback,
though, they each would have had the chance to improve. Their manager’s
avoidance of social discomfort didn’t just hurt their promotion prospects; it hurt
the functioning of the team as a whole.
Making matters worse, while people are reluctant to tell us the truth about how
they see us, they don’t seem to have the same problem sharing those opinions with
others. In 1972, Herb Blumberg, then a graduate psychology student at Johns
Hopkins University, conducted a study to investigate this phenomenon. He
instructed female undergraduate students to think about four people in their lives
—their best friend, their next two closest friends, and someone they disliked—
and to list each person’s positive and negative traits. Blumberg then asked
whether they had mentioned each trait to any of the four people they were rating
(for example, “you think your best friend Gina is conceited. Have you ever
shared your observations with Gina?”).
His findings were startling. Participants reported freely sharing their opinions,
say, that Gina is conceited, with others—even people they didn’t like—but they
almost never shared them with that person. Blumberg perceptively concluded that
our social world is “devised to keep people from learning too much about what
others think of them.”
This study is disconcerting evidence of something many of us secretly fear:
that our employees, co-workers, friends, and family probably are sharing what
they think about us—they’re just not sharing it with us!
And this grim reality can get grimmer at work. When was the last time your
boss sat you down to tell you how you could do better? The last time your
colleagues gathered—willingly, voluntarily, and of their own initiative—to
critique one another so they could improve? The last time you got honest, critical
feedback outside an HR-mandated performance review (or sometimes even in
one)? Wait, you can’t think of a time where that happened? You’re not alone.
Chances are that the following scenario sounds a bit more familiar. Barb is
making a presentation to her team on a new, clearly ill-conceived initiative. When
she finishes, the room is surprisingly silent, save a few unconvincing utterances of
“Good job,” “Nice plan,” and “Can’t wait to hear more.” Later that day, the
unofficial meeting after the meeting (sans Barb) takes place, where her team
discusses, often unkindly, what they really thought of her presentation. This
scenario is all too common because, despite modern organizations’ lip service to
things like feedback and performance management, very few people actually get
timely, honest opinions about how they’re doing.
Our inclination to be MUM actually makes sense from an evolutionary
perspective. In the early days of the human race, when survival depended on
belonging to a group, upsetting the social apple cart often meant being ostracized
and having to go it alone—a fate that could literally mean death. So just as we
instinctively pull our hand away from a hot stove, we instinctively avoid doing
anything that might jeopardize our social standing. (Fittingly, social rejection
activates the exact same parts of our brains as physical pain does.)
We’ve already seen that people prefer to stay MUM rather than share tough
information—but are they willing to out-and-out lie? Earlier we met Eleanor
Allen, the program manager turned non-profit CEO who improved her selfawareness with the help of her deputy, Evelio. But in spite of her impressive
trajectory, like many engineers, Eleanor is an introvert, and has struggled with
public speaking for much of her career.
*1
In her early years in particular, she’d
agonize over every presentation—and once it was over she’d usually get stuck in a
ruminative loop about her performance.
After her time in Puerto Rico, Eleanor and her team were bidding on another
large water-infrastructure program. When she learned they’d been named one of
the two finalists, her first thought was, Oh no…I have to make a presentation
during the final interview. But she prepared and delivered it as best she could, and
even remembers feeling uncharacteristically calm afterward.
But much to her disappointment, Eleanor’s team lost the job. As a big believer
in external self-awareness, she decided to get some feedback on her presentation
to see whether it had played a role in the loss. Maybe she was missing something
and her colleagues could help her understand what it was. So Eleanor asked one
of her project team members—let’s call him Phil—what he had thought of her
final presentation. “Oh, you did great!” Phil enthusiastically replied. “I don’t
know why we didn’t get it.” Eleanor breathed a sigh of relief and concluded that
there must have been another reason for the big loss.
That is, until a few days later, when she received a totally out-of-the-blue call
from a colleague to express her condolences that they’d lost the project.
Whispering, she asked Eleanor, “So what happened in that interview?” Eleanor
told her that the presentation had gone fine. “Well, that’s not what Phil told me,”
she replied, “He said it was horrible!”
Eleanor was so taken aback she almost dropped the phone. She had specifically
asked Phil what he thought and he had flat-out lied to avoid the awkwardness of
telling her the truth. And unfortunately, Phil is not unique in this tendency.
Research shows that people are perfectly willing to tell white lies when they’re
easier than the cold, hard truth. In one clever study, researchers Bella DePaulo
and Kathy Bell invited participants into their lab and asked them to evaluate a
series of paintings. Afterward, the researchers brought in the artists who created
them and asked participants to share the feedback they had just given. Lo and
behold, they sugar-coated their true feelings, and many outright lied—especially
when the artist said that a painting was personally important. One participant
tellingly went from exclaiming in private, “It’s ugly. Just ugly!” to saying to the
artist, “I like it. It’s my second-favorite of the group.”
As DePaulo and Bell conclude, not only are we “practitioners of politeness,”
we are especially likely to lie when the other person is personally invested in
whatever it is we’re giving them feedback about. So, we lie for the same reason
our tribal ancestors did: we don’t want to upset the social apple cart. Instead, we
politely accept the “face” people present to the world (that is, who we think they
think they are) and avoid putting forward information that may challenge it—
even if doing so would ultimately be useful.
For Eleanor, Phil’s white lie was an alarm-clock event that catalyzed a critical
insight. With the realization that just casually asking “How did I do?” isn’t
enough, she’s since made the commitment to proactively seek specific and
focused feedback from people who will tell her the truth. And she’s grown by
leaps and bounds as a result: as just one example, as the CEO of global non-profit
Water for People, Eleanor recently gave a phenomenal TEDx Mile High talk that
would have made poor Phil’s head spin! It seems that nowhere is the adage “You
don’t get what you don’t ask for” more true than when it comes to seeking the
truth about how others see us.
But as Eleanor and others like her usually discover, self-awareness becomes
particularly critical, yet infinitely more difficult, when you’re the boss. Studies
show that self-aware leaders are more successful and promotable, and some
research has even shown that self-awareness is the single greatest predictor of
leadership success. The problem is, the higher up you are on the corporate food
chain, the less likely you are to be self-aware, an affliction that’s been labeled
CEO Disease. After all, who really wants to tell the boss that his management
style is alienating people, or that her latest staffing choices are causing friction, or
that his clients find him controlling? Complicating matters, as we saw with Steve
from chapter 3, the overconfidence that results from past successes can make it
challenging for leaders to hear and accept difficult feedback—and thus make
their employees more reluctant to give it.
Pixar president Ed Catmull has witnessed this reluctance to speak truth to
power firsthand. Years before he co-founded his company and became president
of Disney Animation Studios, he was a young PhD student at the University of
Utah’s nascent computer graphics program. He adored the comradery he had with
his professors and fellow graduate students—there were no strict hierarchies, they
worked independently, and everyone generally got along. Catmull liked this
environment so much that he created a similar structure in his first job out of
school. As the head of a small computer animation research team at the New
York Institute of Technology, he hired smart people, treated them as equals, and
let them do their thing. As a result, they told him pretty much everything that was
going on. He was involved in social activities and was basically one of the guys—
it felt good.
But when Catmull was hired to lead Lucasfilm’s brand-new computer division,
he realized that he’d need to rethink how he managed people. His new team
would be bigger, better resourced, and have a much higher profile. To achieve
George Lucas’s ambitious vision of bringing computer technology to Hollywood,
Catmull reasoned, he would need to adopt a more formal, hierarchical structure
with a manager running each of the graphics, video, and audio groups. And when
he did that, nearly instantaneously he noticed that something was different.
Casual chatter had a habit of going silent whenever he entered the room. He was
getting mostly good news and hardly any bad news. And his team was no longer
inviting him to their social gatherings.
Catmull didn’t like this very much, nor could he figure out why it was
happening. He didn’t feel like a different person than University of Utah Ed or
New York Tech Ed. But after wrestling with this question for months, he finally
realized that his new role as The Boss, coupled with his increasing prominence in
the academic community, had changed the way people perceived him. “Even
though I hadn’t changed,” he told me, “I recognized that, okay, this is the way it
is, and it will probably get worse over time.” In Catmull’s case, the “it” was the
MUM effect, and it was presenting a giant obstacle not just in his own
performance, but to the collective self-awareness of his team. As we’ll see later in
the book, Catmull has made it a top-tier priority to combat the MUM effect and
seek the honest truth, not just about himself as a leader, but about the challenges
and issues his company is facing. And it has made quite a difference. Yet as we’ll
soon see, for leaders in particular, overcoming the MUM effect is only half the
battle.
THE OSTRICH TRINITY
If the first barrier to external self-awareness is other people’s reluctance to tell the
truth, the second is our reluctance to ask for it. Most of us, at least intellectually,
know we should be seeking more feedback than we are currently. Yet even when
we have a rational reason to do something, our emotions can still stop us in our
tracks; in this case, because asking for feedback makes us uncomfortable, we
instead find ways to justify our willful ignorance.
In my experience, there are three primary excuses we make, and because they
are designed to help us feel better about keeping our heads in the sand, I call them
the Ostrich Trinity. But luckily, pushing past these excuses is absolutely possible,
and it requires just one simple decision: to seek out the truth on our own terms
rather than leaving it in other people’s well-meaning (but MUM) hands.
Let’s start with the first excuse: I don’t need to ask for feedback. Having
learned about the MUM effect, we already know that this is flat-out wrong—and
especially wrong for leaders. For proof, we need not look further than the annals
of business history. When Pehr Gyllenhammar took over as executive chairman
of Volvo in 1971, the future for the automaker looked as bright and shiny as their
freshly painted cars. The 36-year-old wunderkind had been born into business
royalty; his father, Pehr Gyllenhammar Sr., was the CEO of Scandinavia’s largest
insurance company, Skandia. Educated at Sweden’s prestigious Lund University
and Switzerland’s Centre d’Etudes Industrielles, Pehr Gyllenhammar Jr. was
hardworking, confident, and a master at leveraging his connections. In fact, he’d
only just succeeded his father as the CEO of Skandia when, months later, he
replaced his father-in-law at the thriving Swedish car company.
From the outset, Gyllenhammar had little interest in maintaining a low profile.
He’d proudly roll into the office each morning in his custom-built 1979 244
Turbo; or his 1980 240 Series with a B21ET engine; or his 1981 262 Coupe—
each tailor-made creation was painted bright red with a matching interior.
Though no other Volvo sported that color scheme, Gyllenhammar required that
his cars be “cheeky” and “provocative” and have “nerve.” That was also how he
ran his company.
And it seemed to work. At least at first, as he basked in the success of creating
Volvo’s innovative team-based craftsmanship model. But this success would soon
sow the seeds of his undoing. In the years that followed, Gyllenhammar’s head
grew in lock-step with the company’s profits, earning him the nickname “The
Emperor.” His hubris, overconfidence, and refusal to take advice from anybody
led him to pursue risky deals with paltry returns, and inexplicably, he often
bragged about them to the press. In later years, as Volvo was reporting losses and
closing plants, Gyllenhammar was Scandinavia’s highest-paid executive. And
because he had seeded Volvo’s board with personal friends he knew would never
confront him about his mistakes, it seemed all but certain that his decisions would
go unchallenged.
In September of 1993, Volvo announced a merger with the French state-owned
automaker Renault. It was a move that would make the new entity the world’s
sixth-largest automaker. And who fancied himself as the chairman of the
majority owners? Pehr Gyllenhammar, of course! Together with Renault CEO
Louis Schweitzer, they proudly outlined their plan for a new borderless business.
But from the moment Volvo’s managers and employees heard the news, they
were decidedly not on board. Convinced that it was both a bad business move and
an attempt to sell them down the river, one anonymously called the situation “an
impenetrable mess.” Yet Gyllenhammar ignored their pleas and remained
stunningly confident in the deal. At one point, he issued an updated prospectus
that upped the deal’s projected savings from $4.8 billion to $7.4 billion, despite
having no new information to support such inflated estimates.
When it was abundantly clear that Gyllenhammar had no interest in listening to
his employees’ opinions, they decided to leak them to the press. At this point,
minority shareholders began to speak up about their opposition to the deal.
Similar announcements from larger shareholders like Skandia Insurance (yes, his
father’s own company) followed. As one large shareholder remarked, “We didn’t
realize Mr. Gyllenhammar had so many personal enemies.”
In what must have come as an utter shock to the oblivious “Emperor,” Volvo
investors eventually banded together and the board withdrew its proposal for the
merger. On that same day, Gyllenhammar resigned; his unwillingness to listen to
his employees’ feedback, his refusal to seek input from his closest advisors, and
his inability to question his own assumptions would eventually wipe out $1.1
billion in shareholder wealth. The company was acquired by Ford just five years
later, and Gyllenhammar’s bright and shiny career tanked along with the company
he had so epically mismanaged.
Though companies of this size rarely fail because of one factor alone,
Gyllenhammar’s hubris and lack of self-awareness were significant contributors.
Case in point: years later, in a comical display of his sustained delusion,
Gyllenhammar attributed the failed deal to an “envious vendetta” against him.
Whether or not we run a multibillion-dollar company, protecting our fragile
egos by deciding we are right and others are wrong can be risky at best and
devastating at worst. The good news is that pushing past the first excuse of the
Ostrich Trinity is fairly simple: we must decide to pull our heads out of the sand
and recognize that others’ opinions are just as important for insight as our
own.
Sometimes, though, we do want to ask for feedback, but we’re worried that
doing so would convey weakness or come at a cost. This second excuse, however
—I shouldn’t ask for feedback—is equally unfounded. One study showed that
83 percent of top-performing leaders regularly solicit feedback, compared to just
17 percent of the worst-performing ones. If anything, we are socially and
professionally rewarded for seeking critical feedback; leaders who do are
seen as more effective, not just by their bosses, but by their peers and employees
(interestingly, those who seek primarily positive feedback are seen as less
effective). And not surprisingly, nearly three-quarters of our unicorns reported
having a proactive strategy to get information from people who will tell them the
truth. So if we take a page from their book and muster the courage to do so, we’ll
be rewarded with self-insight and a new perspective on how we can improve.
The final excuse in the Ostrich Trinity is perhaps the most understandable: I
don’t want to ask for feedback. It doesn’t take a degree in organizational
psychology to know that feedback can be painful; even though we intellectually
understand its value, we fear it simply because it might be a bitter pill to swallow.
Over the course of my career, I’ve done hundreds of presentations and
workshops, and to this day, every single time I sit down to read audience
evaluations, I get a huge pit in my stomach. I’m sure you know that feeling—it’s
the dread that overtakes you when walking into your performance appraisal with
your boss, or sitting down for a marriage counseling session, or having the first
conversation with a friend or colleague after you’ve had a conflict.
But while most people are afraid of feedback, surely the ease with which our
unicorns hear it should serve as inspiration for the rest of us, right? As it turns
out, they have the same reactions that we do (despite their mythical moniker, they
are still human). One sales executive quipped, “Are you kidding me? I hate
hearing that I’m not perfect!” But what makes unicorns truly special is the fact
that they push through this fear, defensiveness, and vulnerability and go for it
anyway. As U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once opined, “Courage is
not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more
important than fear.” In our case, that “something else” is insight.
Clearly, falling prey to the Ostrich Trinity is a dreadfully dangerous barrier to
external self-awareness. Yet it is one that can be overcome. Instead of waiting for
feedback to come to us, risking being blindsided, or worse, sticking our heads in
the sand, we can choose to learn the truth on our own terms. So let’s turn to
three actionable strategies to do that. (I also suggest taking the quick assessment
in appendix M to get a baseline on how much you’re currently asking for
feedback.)
360-DEGREE FEEDBACK
The first method, 360-degree feedback, is seemingly ubiquitous in modern
organizations. With a rich history dating back to the 1950s, it’s designed to
provide insight into how we’re seen not only by our managers, but by a variety of
groups, like direct reports, peers, clients, or board members. (It’s called a 360
because we’re getting data from all directions.) Recent technological advances
have made 360s more accessible for workers in companies large and small, while
the simultaneous growth of my field, organizational psychology, has made them
increasingly popular. And nowadays, depending on who you ask, anywhere from
30 percent to 90 percent of organizations use this tool in one way or another. But
360s aren’t just for businesspeople: they can be used with great success in
families, schools, and community organizations, to name a few examples. In one
study, undergraduates in a science and technology program that received 360-
degree feedback (from their friends, parents, and teachers) turned in higherquality homework and even received better grades in the course.
So much has been written about 360 reviews—and chances are you’ve had at
least one over the course of your career—that I won’t retread too much ground
other than to briefly mention their advantages and disadvantages when it comes to
increasing our external self-awareness. (And if you haven’t yet taken one, see
appendix N for a few free resources.) One of the biggest upsides of 360s is their
anonymity. Because responses are averaged across respondents, people can
provide their feedback without fear that it will come back to bite them. This is
particularly true for leaders whose subordinates fear the repercussions of being
brutally honest; luckily, the MUM effect usually disappears when feedback can’t
be traced back to us.
The second advantage of 360s is that they show us how our self-views stack up
against others’ views of us. For example, you might discover that while you
believe yourself to be conscientious and hardworking, your boss doesn’t share that
opinion. Or that your peers consider you to be a great communicator and
connector even though you don’t see yourself that way at all. However, no matter
what we learn, when multiple people are telling us the same thing, it’s difficult to
explain it away—that “Oh, he’s just jealous because I got promoted before him,”
or “She wouldn’t know what good communication skills looked like if they
punched her in the face.” As one manager who’d recently taken a 360 described,
“[If my 360 tells me] anything critical…my first…reaction is ‘What the hell are
they talking about?’ but if it’s repeated…and you find several people have said it,
you’ve got to face the facts: either it’s simply true, or it’s their perception of you,
which is just as important.”
Despite the clear benefits of 360s, they also come with a few disadvantages
that prevent them from being the “be-all, end-all” route to external selfawareness. First and foremost, because most 360s are numeric, it can be difficult
to interpret our results in a meaningful or actionable way. Okay, so I got a 2 out of
5 on relationship-building, we might think, but what does that actually mean? And
what should I be doing differently? No one loves data and numbers more than I
do, but this kind of information isn’t always easy to translate into insight. One
way to get around this is through a variation that I prefer to use in my executive
coaching work, something I call a “qualitative 360.” Instead of just sending
people a survey, I track them down and talk to them. Then, when I report the
findings, I can provide my clients with specific themes and examples that paint a
richer picture.
Of course, these disadvantages don’t mean we should abandon the practice of
360-feedback altogether. Instead, we should use it in conjunction with other
approaches. In particular, a 360 can be an extremely helpful first step in learning
about pillars like our patterns, reactions, and impact on others. Let’s now examine
a complementary approach that I have found to be one of the most powerful
feedback tools at our disposal.
THE RIGHT FEEDBACK
One chilly winter afternoon, I sat in a cacophonous coffee shop waiting for Kim,
my newest client, to walk through the door. Her boss, Greg, had hired me to work
with her in the wake of a rather strange series of events. According to Greg, Kim,
who ran his compliance function, was struggling to deal with some difficult
feedback she’d received in a recent 360. Her behavior was becoming increasingly
concerning—in the past month alone, Greg had received two complaints about
her from managers in other departments.
Knowing there are always two sides to every story, I was eager to hear Kim’s
perspective. When the door opened with a whoosh of cold air, I looked up to see
a tiny, impeccably dressed woman with a wild mop of brown hair impatiently
scanning the room. Her intense eyes eventually locked with mine. “Tasha?” she
mouthed. I nodded, waving her over. We exchanged a few pleasantries, but I
could see she wasn’t thrilled to be there.
“Let’s get down to business,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me a little more about
how I can best help you.”
Kim took a deep breath and launched into her tale. A few months after Greg
was hired to lead her business unit, he had decided to hold a team development
session. As part of the process, he asked everyone to take a 360-degree
assessment to get feedback on how they were seen by their colleagues and
employees. As is almost always the case, there were plenty of surprises, and for
Kim, they were not the happy kind. What she learned had in fact turned her
world—and her self-perceptions—upside down. “I’m grateful that Greg hired you
to help me,” she said, “but I have to tell you…it’s been devastating and I’m having
trouble dealing with it. Maybe we can start by just trying to make sense of
everything.”
To kick off with something positive, I asked Kim if there was anything in her
results that was a pleasant surprise. Her gloomy expression broke into something
that almost resembled a smile. “Well, I was happy to hear my team say that I
empower them,” she said, “because that’s really important to me. And more
generally, people see me as a strategic thinker who’s dedicated to doing the right
thing for the business.”
“I know people who would kill for just one of those qualities,” I replied. “Now,
what did you learn that shocked you?”
Kim fished out a pristine manila folder labeled “My 360 Results” from her
purse. She removed her report, placed it gingerly on the table, and proceeded to
glare at it accusingly for a good 30 seconds. She opened to a page where she’d
scribbled notes all over the margin. “It seems that the people I work with think
I’m acerbic, aggressive, and overconfident. One mentioned a meeting where I
apparently lashed out at someone when they made a bad choice for the business.
Someone else said that I assault people with questions, make snap judgments, and
am too blunt.”
I asked if she’d ever gotten that type of feedback before. “Never,” Kim said.
“The reason this is so shocking to me is that I’ve always been pretty insecure—the
fact that anyone could perceive me as full of myself is…well, it breaks my heart.”
I could see tears welling up in her eyes. “I have no idea what I’m doing to create
this impression,” she said despairingly.
I truly felt for Kim. Having worked with so many clients in the same position, I
know how difficult it is to learn that others don’t always see us the way we see us.
Indeed, the reason she’d been so blindsided was that she hadn’t been asking for
the right kind of feedback—or, to be frank, any feedback at all. Clearly, we had
our work cut out for us. But I commended Kim for the huge step she was taking
—it was a step I was sure she’d soon look back on as a turning point in her career.
After Kim had a bit of time to process our first conversation, we met again to
define a few goals she’d work on over the next few months. But I could tell that
something was still nagging her and asked what it was. “It’s clear to me now,” she
told me, “that I spend so much time driving results that I’m forgetting about the
relationship part. But I still don’t understand what I’m doing to create this
perception. How am I supposed to improve if I don’t understand what I need to
do differently?”
It was an astute question that illustrated an unfortunate truth about feedback: if
we don’t understand the behavior we’re getting feedback about, we don’t yet
have the power to make better choices. Luckily, I had a solution in my hip
pocket—I was just worried Kim would dismiss it out of hand.
“I think we need to get you some better data,” I began, “and the only way to do
that is for you to ask a couple of people a little more directly.” As I predicted,
Kim worried that doing this would be a show of weakness (remember the second
excuse of the Ostrich Trinity?). But after a little convincing, she agreed to try it.
To help her gain more insight about how she was seen, Kim and I used an
approach that I call the RIGHT Feedback Process. The idea is that all feedback
(and all sources of feedback) are not created equal: we have to choose the RIGHT
people, ask them the RIGHT questions, and use the RIGHT process to get the kind
of valuable information that leads to actionable insight.
When I first started studying our unicorns, I expected that they would report
seeking feedback from everybody: their colleagues, their friends and neighbors,
the person next to them in line at the grocery store. But to my amazement, they
reported the opposite approach. One unicorn, a bright young customer-service
manager in the Philippines, noted, “I get feedback all the time, but not from all
the people. I rely on a small, trusted group that I know will tell me the truth.” And
as we’ll see, she’s not alone. In fact, as a group, our unicorns showed remarkable
consistency in just how selective they were. They recognize that quality trumps
quantity and that not all input creates true insight—which is why they always
work to choose the right people.
Now, before we look at who we should turn to for feedback, let’s start with
who we shouldn’t turn to. The first category, unloving critics, are the type of
people who would criticize everything we do: a jealous co-worker, an ex with a
grudge, or an irrationally uptight boss. Whatever their motives—they don’t want
us to succeed, they don’t trust us, or they’re just unreasonably critical people—
their feedback rarely objectively reflects reality.
On the other end of the spectrum, the second source to avoid are uncritical
lovers. While unloving critics hate everything we do, uncritical lovers wouldn’t
criticize us if their lives depended on it. This group can include both people who
think we walk on water and can do no wrong (e.g., our moms) and those who are
afraid to tell us the truth (e.g., people-pleasers or fearful employees). And while
uncritical lovers’ feedback will invariably be easier to hear, it can’t always be
trusted. As leadership professor John Jacob Gardner observed, “Pity the leader
caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers.”
So if we shouldn’t ask for feedback from unloving critics or uncritical lovers,
who should we ask? The answer is loving critics: people who will be honest with
us while still having our best interests at heart. But the ideal people for this job
aren’t always the most obvious. It’s easy to assume that those we’re closest to—a
spouse, a best friend, etc.—would make the best loving critics. But just because
someone knows us best doesn’t mean they will serve us well in this role. There are
a few additional factors you’ll want to consider.
The first is a level of mutual trust. A loving critic doesn’t need to be someone
who would help you bury a body or bail you out of jail at 2:00 a.m. (though
hopefully you’d never need this kind of friend), but they should be someone you
implicitly know has your best interests at heart. Remember that closeness and trust
aren’t always the same thing. Often, the longer we’ve known someone, and
particularly if we’re related to them, the more complex our relationship can be (I
believe the word “frenemy” was invented specifically for this situation). Choosing
someone with whom we have a long and convoluted history won’t necessarily
preclude helpful feedback, but it might make the conversation more complicated
or emotionally charged than it needs to be.
By the same token, there might be someone you don’t know nearly as well,
such as a co-worker or casual acquaintance, who genuinely wants you to be
successful and is eager to play a greater role in helping you succeed. In Kim’s
case, one of her loving critics—the one I’d argue gave her the most helpful
feedback—was a peer whom she’d worked with for years, but with whom she
wasn’t particularly close. They didn’t hang out socially, but Kim knew her well
enough to know she was invested in her success.
Identifying loving critics isn’t easy, but here, actions speak louder than words.
Does she go out of her way to help you improve? Does he invest his time and
energy to help you grow and succeed? A story from the early days of Pixar
president Ed Catmull’s career is a perfect example of how to spot a loving critic.
As I mentioned earlier, long before Catmull founded Pixar, he was a PhD
student in the University of Utah’s computer science program—and when it was
time to write his dissertation, he was a nervous one. Even though he had made the
groundbreaking discovery of the z-buffer, an algorithm that allows computers to
track the depth of three-dimensional objects, he had never written much of
anything in his life.
When Catmull finally finished his tome, he submitted it to his dissertation
committee and eagerly awaited their reviews. The first committee member to
respond was overwhelmingly complimentary. Maybe my writing isn’t so bad after
all, Catmull concluded. Later that week, more feedback came in from another
committee member, who also happened to be the chair of the department. But his
feedback wasn’t so kind, communicating in no uncertain terms that the thesis was,
in fact, horribly written. For days, Catmull scratched his head trying to square
these two seemingly contradictory responses.
Then one afternoon, the complimentary committee member suddenly appeared
in Catmull’s office and proceeded to trash his thesis, providing a laundry list of all
the things that were wrong with it. And even though that feedback was nearly
identical to what he’d heard from the department chair, Catmull’s reaction
couldn’t have been more different. What is wrong with this guy? he angrily
wondered. He wasn’t denying that the feedback was accurate; the issue was the
committee member’s motive for giving it. He doesn’t want to help, Catmull
thought. He just wants to impress the department chair. It didn’t take much
deliberation for Catmull to decide to remove him from his committee.
Although his now-former committee member clearly didn’t have his best
interests at heart, Catmull had a hunch that the department chair did. His instincts
proved to be correct when the very busy chair invited him to his home to discuss
how to improve the manuscript, and proceeded to spend an entire day with him
reviewing and revising. The finished product was impressive. Not only did
Catmull pass his defense with flying colors; the work is widely considered one of
the most historically significant contributions to the field of computer graphics.
But the more important lesson Catmull learned from the experience was that
anyone can give critical feedback and then cut and run—it’s the people who stick
around to help you see it through you can really trust.
However, when it comes to feedback, good intentions aren’t always enough.
(You know what they say about the road to hell…) To produce truly useful
insight, the person must also have sufficient exposure to the behavior you
want feedback on and a clear picture of what success looks like. For
example, one of my closest friends is a lawyer. Because she has demonstrated
time and again that she has my best interests at heart, she would be a great lovingcritic contender—but not for everything. If I asked her to give me feedback on
my public speaking skills, for example, we’d run into two problems. First, she
almost never hears me speak, so she wouldn’t have enough data to really comment
on how I’m doing. The other problem is that, since she isn’t very familiar with the
world of public speaking (current trends, dos and don’ts, etc.), the feedback she
gives me may be candid and sincere—but perhaps not especially helpful.
However, an area where she could add tremendous value might be helping me
understand how I show up in social situations. She has plenty of exposure to my
behavior in this realm, and because she’s one of the most socially savvy people I
know, her observations would carry a lot of weight.
The third and final factor in selecting a loving critic is whether they will be
willing and able to be brutally honest with you. The best yardstick here is
whether they’ve ever told you a tough truth. But even if they haven’t, you can
examine their behavior in other situations. Someone who isn’t afraid to speak his
or her mind, even when doing so may cause social discomfort, is likely to be a
good loving critic. Part of the reason Kim selected the peer I mentioned earlier
was that she had seen her raise tough issues in meetings.
However, while keeping all of this in mind, you should also listen to your
instincts. As Malcolm Gladwell points out in his book Blink, our gut reactions can
be surprisingly informative. In this case, I tend to agree: if a loving-critic
candidate doesn’t quite feel right to you, they probably aren’t.
Once you’ve chosen your loving critics, it’s time to figure out the right
questions to ask them. At this point, you’re not yet having the actual feedback
conversation (we’ll get to that soon)—right now you’re simply getting your
thoughts together regarding how you want the conversation to go and how you’ll
use it to better understand the “you” that you’re projecting to the world.
The most important characteristic of the right questions is specificity. A
good way to think about this is to look at the scientific method. When scientists—
chemists, physicists, and yes, even psychologists—build theories, we test specific
hypotheses about the phenomenon we’re studying. By the same token, if you can
come up with a working hypothesis or two about how other people see you—for
example, “I think I have a tendency to come across as timid and non-authoritative
when I meet with clients; is that your experience?”—it will give you a focused
framework for the conversation and help you either confirm or deny your
suspicion.
This emphasis on specificity might be counterintuitive if you’ve become
accustomed to the common open-ended approaches to feedback in many
organizations, like the Start/Stop/Continue Model.
*2 While this method has
merits, for our purposes, it’s far too broad. First off, asking your loving critics for
general feedback with no parameters or specifics could be confusing for them
and unhelpful to you. For example, if I said to a client, “I’d love any observations
about how I’m doing”—that client won’t know what’s on the table. Do I want
feedback on whether I ask good questions during coaching sessions? Whether my
jokes are funny? Whether I’m a snazzy dresser? This ambiguity could make the
feedback conversation uncomfortable for both of us. Imagine if I went in wanting
to learn how I’m doing on my project but come out of it with feedback that I
wear the wrong color of makeup (incidentally, that actually happened to a friend
of mine during a conversation with one of her graduate professors). The bottom
line is that it’s on you to ask the questions you want answered—and in general,
the more specific you are, the more seamless and successful the process will be
for both you and your loving critics.
So we’ve established that the right questions come from a specific working
hypothesis—but how do we develop that hypothesis? One way is to consider how
you see certain pillars (like your aspirations, patterns, and impact), or to
remember feedback you’ve received in the past. Let’s look at how Kim did it.
Given her aspirations to take on more responsibility in the future, she knew that
she couldn’t be successful if she was seen as abrupt or aggressive. Her 360 results
made it clear that she had some work to do in these areas, but she needed more
information. So here was Kim’s working hypothesis: I behave abrasively at work,
particularly in meetings. Since we already had inside information that her
colleagues felt this way, we expected to confirm this hypothesis, but we really
wanted to learn what she was doing to create that impression. (You’ll also notice
that Kim’s working hypothesis wasn’t an indictment of her personally, but rather a
specific behavior that she wanted to better understand.)
In general, it’s a good idea to focus on just one or two working hypotheses
at a time. As with most things, when you try to do too much at once, you can get
overwhelmed—and defensive—pretty quickly. (“You mean not only is my
makeup the wrong color, but I’m also seen as a misanthrope who makes everyone
uncomfortable in meetings?!”) In general, when it comes to self-awareness and
self-improvement, I’m a big proponent of realism. You can’t—and shouldn’t—try
to transform yourself overnight. And in fact, the people I’ve seen make the most
dramatic improvements are usually the ones who were laser-focused on one thing
at a time.
Let’s turn back to Kim. She was armed with her target list of loving critics (the
right people) and her working hypothesis (the right questions), so it was now time
to build the right process. Kim started by approaching her three desired loving
critics: me (an easy sell) and two of her peers. She set aside 15 minutes for each
conversation, which she began by giving them some context—sharing what she’d
learned during her 360 and why she wanted to know more. Specifically, she
requested that they observe her in meetings (plus any other notable interactions)
and tell her when she was and wasn’t being abrasive. And despite her enthusiasm
to get started, she acknowledged that what she was asking for wasn’t a small favor
and suggested that they think about it before accepting. This ensured that they
weren’t just agreeing out of politeness—and after thinking about it, both
enthusiastically agreed the very next day.
At this point, all that was left to do was implement a solid process to extract the
golden egg: their feedback. First, the gestation period. Kim’s loving critics would
need a window of time to watch her in a few meetings and record some good
observations—a month seemed sufficient. Second, the harvesting of the data.
Kim requested one 30-minute phone call every month with each loving critic for
the next three months. As we’ll soon see, this mere four and a half hours would
yield a priceless return.
Over the course of those three months, Kim diligently held her feedback
meetings with her peers, and she and I continued to meet monthly. Because she’d
set it up so carefully, the conversations went like clockwork. This isn’t to say that
the feedback was easy to hear. Kim made many shocking discoveries, but the
important thing was that she was committed to working through them. For
example, in the first meeting I observed, I noticed that Kim spent most of her
time focused on the negative (complaining, pointing out what wasn’t going well,
etc.). I gave her the feedback, reading the specific examples of the behavior I’d
noticed. And instead of getting defensive, she said “I never noticed I was doing
that.” By the next meeting I attended, she was already approaching things more
neutrally and calling out the positive.
Another loving critic pointed out a time when Kim had been unnecessarily
blunt with someone, which resulted in another “aha moment.” Kim had grown up
in an unusually direct family, and she was now seeing that what felt normal to her
was often uncomfortable for others. She needed to meet people on their terms
rather than hers.
With the help of her loving critics, Kim built a better picture in her mind of
how her behavior was coming across. As she experimented with new choices, she
began to see that being more diplomatic didn’t just improve her relationships;
getting her points across without the collateral damage actually made it easier to
get work done. She sure could communicate a lot better, she found, when people
weren’t scared of her.
Perhaps Kim’s biggest turning point came when she discovered the “trigger”
that sent her into a downward spiral: the feeling that her knowledge was being
questioned. And with that discovery came control. She started experimenting
with approaches to tame her reactions when she’d been set off, and noticed that
simply giving her inner voice the opportunity to express itself helped. Merely
thinking I feel attacked or criticized right now helped her rise above the temptation
to instantly act upon that feeling (naming our emotions to the rescue!). She also
found that a few moments of preparation could help her stay calm. Before
walking into a meeting that she thought might trigger her, she now takes, in her
words, a “mental valium.” This metaphorical medication gives her the power to
stay calm and open-minded, and to ask people questions to better understand
where they’re coming from instead of jumping down their throats.
About a month after Kim and I had completed our work together, her boss
summoned me to his office for a discussion. I was worried that she’d started to
slide back into her old behaviors. But when I walked into Greg’s office, the
normally taciturn man gave me a giant hug. In addition to sharing the dramatic
changes he’d noticed personally, Greg reported that the complaints from other
departments had disappeared. (It’s since been more than two years, and he’s never
gotten another call.) Kim’s prickly relationships began to soften and deepen. She
felt less frustrated, more confident, and happier at work and at home. Once Greg
came to trust her, he began to give her more opportunities and more challenges—
and she was nailing them. In fact, Greg recently shared that Kim is now his most
valued team member. It was one of the most remarkable transformations I’ve ever
seen—a truly inspiring example of insight in action.
THE DINNER OF TRUTH
In my experience, the RIGHT feedback process is probably the most powerful
booster of external self-awareness that you have at your disposal—one that’s
especially well suited for the workplace. But work isn’t the only place where
external self-awareness matters. Aren’t most of us equally curious about how
we’re seen in our personal lives—by our friends, our neighbors, our community,
and our family? While the RIGHT method can certainly be applied to this sort of
feedback, there is another slightly simpler method for learning how we show up
in the personal realm. I call it the Dinner of Truth, and if that sounds slightly
ominous, that’s because it is. Yet for those who make the brave choice to try it,
the Dinner of Truth can have an astonishing impact not just on our external selfawareness, but on our most important personal relationships.
It was an unusually sunny afternoon in the Pacific Northwest, and professor
Josh Misner was driving his kids home from school. As they sat squished together
in the front bench seat of his old Ford pickup, the trio cheerfully reported on
their respective days. This was one of those everyday joyful moments that Misner
loves to revel in. A prominent member of the Good Men Project, Misner is a
special breed of amazingly modern father, perfectly in touch with his feelings and
proud to make it known that he takes the job of raising his kids even more
seriously than he does his job as an accomplished and hardworking
communications professor.
Once his children had finished, he told them about an exercise he’d been
tinkering with for one of his communication classes. The topic, as it so happens,
was self-awareness. Suddenly, Misner realized that the perfect opportunity to test
the exercise was staring him in the face. After all, he couldn’t think of anyone on
this earth with whom he’d rather have solid communication than his children.
And even though they were young, he figured he’d get some good data—kids
have a knack for saying exactly what they’re thinking.
“Hey,” he said, “Do you guys want to help me try out this new exercise?”
“Sure, Daddy!” his seven-year-old son Parker and ten-year-old daughter Bella
enthusiastically responded.
“OK, great!” he smiled. “So…what bugs you the most about me?”
Misner was concerned when they started squirming uncomfortably in their
seats. “Um, you’re good, Dad!” said Bella. “Yep, nothing bugs us about you,
Dad!” echoed Parker.
Misner loved being a father. He knew he was good at it. What could possibly
be making them so uncomfortable? It can’t be anything serious, he reassured
himself.
“Guys, I understand that you don’t want to tell Daddy something mean, but
you’re not going to get in trouble. I really want to hear what you think. Tell me
anything.”
A long, pregnant pause filled the car. “Dad,” his seven-year-old weakly
ventured, “I don’t like it when you yell so much.”
Parker’s voice was cracking. Misner glanced from the road to see tears welling
up in his son’s eyes. “It makes me feel like you don’t love me anymore,” he
continued, “and it makes me want to go hide in my room.”
Misner was shattered. Desperately trying to control his expression, he looked at
his daughter, who added, “I don’t like it when you get mad at me, either. It hurts
me and makes me cry.”
As I mentioned earlier, the relationships we have with those closest to us—our
spouses, our kids, our parents, our dearest friends—tend to be messier, more
complicated, and more emotionally charged than those we have with our coworkers. And as Misner realized, constructive feedback has the chance of cutting
far deeper when it’s from the people we love. But I’d argue that this is exactly
what makes it so important. (We’ll pick this thread back up in the next chapter
when we talk about how to deal with tough feedback.)
Painful as it was, Misner pressed on, determined to stick to the exercise that he
had devised. He took a deep breath and started asking questions: “What do you
hear me yelling about the most?” “What impact does it have on you?” “What can
I do differently?” Then he listened to their answers without getting upset or
defensive—though, as he recounts, it was not easy.
That conversation marked the beginning of a new journey, one that first
transformed his relationship with his children and then, inevitably, changed him.
Their feedback served as a profound reminder of the importance of listening and
being patient. He felt more empathy for his kids—and now when he becomes
frustrated with them, he remembers how hurtful it is when he flies off the handle.
Now he watches his words and his actions much more closely. This ingenious
exercise inspired Misner to make many positive changes in his own life, and the
Dinner of Truth has proven time and again to produce radical insight.
So what, exactly, does the Dinner of Truth entail? Here are the instructions:
Contact a close friend, family member, or mentor—someone who
knows you well and with whom you want to strengthen your
relationship. Invite this person to share a meal with you. During the
meal, ask them to tell you the one thing that annoys them most about
you. But first, tell the person why you’re doing this, that nothing is
off-limits, and that you aren’t allowed to answer defensively—only
to listen with an open heart and mind.
Now, as someone who has actually tried this (let this be proof that there is
nothing I will not do in the name of research), I can tell you that the answer isn’t
easy to hear. I did it twice, and both times I dreaded the conversation more than a
trip to the dentist—and I really, really don’t like going to the dentist. Misner’s
students generally react the same way. “As soon as I present the exercise,” Misner
told me, “I can see the blood drain out of their faces and their mouths drop open.”
He fully recognizes that it requires courage—but thousands of students have lived
to tell the tale and are wiser for it.
On a related note, there’s a reason Misner suggests having the conversation
over a meal—ideally dinner. “There’s something magical about breaking bread
with someone,” he says. “Eating is intimate. It involves trust.” Plus, let’s be
honest: painful truths go down a whole lot easier with a nerve-diffusing adult
beverage.
*3
And if you set yourself up for success, the conversation will probably go more
smoothly than you think. Over the years, Misner has assembled valuable list of
dos and don’ts to guide his students in completing this exercise. First, he says,
mental preparation is key. Spend some time trying to anticipate what might be
said and bracing yourself for the worst-case scenario. Second, make a decision
about how “deep” you want to go. The closer we are to the person we choose,
the more insight we stand to gain, but the scarier the conversation might be.
Third, Misner warns his students that the person you ask might not be ready to
open up to you right away; if that’s the case, he suggests reminding them that
this is intended to help you grow, and that all you want to do is check your
perceptions against theirs. This gives them permission to be honest and candid
rather than cautious and polite. Then, once your dinner companion starts sharing
the feedback, Misner says, your job is to keep the conversation going. Yes, I
know it will be tempting to shut down this line of inquiry as quickly as humanly
possible. But to get the most out of this exercise, Misner recommends asking
questions to clarify as necessary, just as he did with his kids during his maiden
voyage of the exercise.
As scary as the Dinner of Truth might feel at first, you might be surprised at
how truly exhilarating—and immeasurably helpful—it is to learn how someone
you deeply care about really sees you. And I probably don’t have to tell you that
this is true for all of the tools we’ve reviewed in this chapter. Although it usually
feels safer to train our gaze inward, we can get so comfortable in our safe, warm
cocoon of delusion that we don’t even realize we’re in it. That’s precisely the
reason we need feedback. So choose your loving critics, make a plan, and get
ready to bask in your newfound insight.
But learning how other people see us—whether it’s through a 360, the RIGHT
Feedback Process, or a Dinner of Truth—is only the first step on the path to
external self-awareness. As eye-opening as feedback can be, if we want to turn it
into the kind of insight that makes our life better, we need to develop a few more
equally critical and rewarding skills: to receive it with grace, to commit to
reflecting on it, and to intelligently respond to it. Let’s now look at how to put
feedback to work.
*1 This is certainly not to suggest that being an introvert automatically makes anyone a poor
public speaker, but rather that for some introverts, public speaking can be especially
challenging.
*2 If you’re not familiar with this model: you’re asking what you should start doing that you’re
not doing, what to stop doing that isn’t serving you well, and what to continue doing to be
successful.
*3 Though with more than one, you may risk a Real Housewives of New Jersey–style tableflipping incident.
If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of
others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fix’d in
your present opinions, modest, sensible men who do not love
disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of
your error.
—BEN FRANKLIN
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that sometimes the greatest
minds in psychology are also the minds in greatest need of psychology. One
semester, I worked as a teaching assistant for an esteemed psychology professor.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t gotten off on the best foot with her students. They saw
her lectures as vague and confusing and her aloof demeanor as an impediment to
their learning. And I had to agree. Time and again, her students begged me to
bring their concerns to her, but I couldn’t imagine having such a conversation
without breaking out in hives. It would’ve probably proven pointless anyway—
and perhaps even made the situation worse.
As the weeks turned into slow, painful months, I helplessly watched the
situation unfold. She soldiered on, apparently without thinking, and the students
became more alienated and disenchanted. Then, one bright spring morning, I was
sitting in my office when I received the following e-mail from her:
As we’re winding down the year, I wanted to reach out to a few key
people I’ve worked with to ask for your feedback. I’d like your
candid observations on what I’m doing well and what I can do better.
Please schedule a meeting where we can review your feedback.
I was amazed. Up until this point, she had appeared completely oblivious about
how she was coming across in the classroom—and yet here she was, making the
brave choice to actively seek feedback. So when my shock eventually subsided, I
felt truly hopeful. My professor was giving me an opportunity that, if I responded
appropriately, could improve the learning experiences of generations of future
students. This would probably be my one shot to do it, so I put everything I had
into preparing for our meeting. In the week leading up to our appointment, I spent
no small amount of time combining what I’d heard from her students with my
own observations. When I finally hit “print,” the finished document was, if I do
say so myself, finely crafted, specific, and fair.
The morning of our meeting, I woke up with a pit in my stomach. I still
remember standing outside my professor’s office, clutching my handout as I
waited for her to call me in, my excitement quickly turning to terror. With sweaty
palms, I pushed the document across the table and began my carefully planned
monologue.
“All the students really value the depth of your knowledge and experience, but
there are times when you can be perceived as unapproachable,” I told her.
Her brow furrowed. “Of course,” I quickly continued, “I have no doubt at all
that you’d do anything in your power to help your students in any way you can.
But I also think there are a few presentational barriers that are preventing you
from getting the very best out of them.” The furrow had become a deep frown.
“For example, one student I spoke with mentioned a time when he asked for
clarification on something you said in your lecture and you just gave him the page
number of the textbook. When he checked it out, he was still confused, but was
reluctant to bring it up again. In the end, he just left it and ended up missing two
items on the exam.”
By now she looked visibly uncomfortable, shifting back and forth in her chair
as if she was sitting on a porcupine. But seeing how much she was struggling with
the process made me admire her all the more. So I pressed on, trying my hardest
to be respectful but candid, sharing my carefully documented examples. When I
finally finished, I breathed a sigh of relief and awaited the words of gratitude that
would undoubtedly follow.
What happened next gives me flashbacks to this day. My professor slid my
handout back to me and flatly stated, “Well that’s nice. But isn’t all of this just
your opinion?”
That’s when it hit me. She had never really wanted my honest feedback in the
first place—she wanted the Kabuki-theater version of honest feedback: the kind
where I told her she was doing a great job and that all the students loved her, even
though that was far from the objective reality.
The point here is that seeking out the truth is a necessary but not completely
sufficient step in becoming externally self-aware. To gain true insight, we also
have to learn how to hear that truth—not just listen to it, but really hear it.
Now I’m not claiming that this is ever easy. Indeed, in my coaching practice, I’ve
since seen just about every possible negative reaction to feedback—yelling,
crying, silence, denial, you name it. In a misguided attempt to cling to the
comfortable mental image we have of ourselves, it’s tempting to react by getting
angry and defensive (remember Steve?) or trying to run away (either literally or
by not listening, shrugging it off, or pretending it never happened). Even our
unicorns get tripped up. But when we make excuses, explain feedback away, or
blame it on bad moods or biases, we’re only hurting ourselves. After all, when we
stubbornly hold tight to our perspective—looking only in the mirror rather than
letting light pass through the prism—we can’t always trust what we see.
In this chapter, we’ll focus on how to successfully receive, reflect on, and
respond to feedback. Through a tool called the 3R Model, we’ll learn how to
resist the siren song of denial and hear difficult or surprising feedback with open
ears and an open mind. As we’ll learn in this chapter, what we hear can take a few
possible forms: it might be critical and surprise us. It might be critical and
support our preexisting beliefs. Or, it might even be positive, either confirming or
opening our eyes to a strength we didn’t know we had. And it’s not until we’ve
received feedback that the real challenge begins: to carefully weigh the source,
find the valuable elements, and decide what we’re going to do about them. (It
would, of course, be overly simplistic to imply that we should blindly accept and
act on whatever we hear.) But whatever the case, successfully responding to
feedback depends on understanding what we’ve heard—and then lining up the
other person’s perspective on our pillars of insight with our own. So let’s start
there.
We first met Florence, the Nigerian businesswoman, political activist, and
unicorn in the first chapter of this book. In her role as a manager at an oil and gas
company in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, she is lucky to have a strong and
supportive relationship with her boss. But one day, he gave her some rather
unwitting feedback that rocked her to her core.
As part of the prep work for an upcoming training that Florence was attending,
the school had asked her boss to fill out a survey describing her work approach.
The day it was due, she was sitting in his cozy office waiting for him to arrive for
a meeting. As Florence gazed at the family pictures hung with care on the warmly
colored wall behind his desk, something caught her eye. It was the feedback
form. And he had completed it.
Florence forced her gaze back to the family portraits and tried very hard to
focus on the adorableness of his children rather than read something she knew
she wasn’t supposed to. When that didn’t work, she checked her phone. When
that didn’t work, she closed her eyes and started humming to herself. Worried
now about how strange she might look to anyone passing by, she opened her eyes
again. And finally, she did what almost anyone in her position would have done:
she peeked at the form. Florence saw a question, “How would you describe the
participant?” and below it was her boss’s reply—just two words: “Very
ambitious.” Her jaw hit the floor, and not in a good way.
Now, to the average Westerner, this feedback wouldn’t be a problem. In fact, it
would likely be a compliment. But in Nigeria, there are powerful social rules that
govern who is “allowed” to be ambitious, and that set of behaviors is only
reserved for men. For a woman, being ambitious—that is, wanting to succeed
professionally, to support herself, to make her own money—runs counter to her
expected place in society, as a mother, a wife, and a homemaker. Therefore, a
woman who is ambitious is also seen as arrogant, proud, overbearing, and
deliberately shunning the role she is expected to play in the world.
Florence was so shocked that she wasn’t even going to pretend she hadn’t been
reading the feedback form. In all her years, she’d never thought of herself as
arrogant or overbearing. But in this alarm-clock moment, she realized she had a
choice. She could go into defensive mode, or she could use it as an opportunity
for insight. Though it wasn’t easy, Florence was determined to explore this
surprising new data and come out the other side braver and wiser. And ever the
unicorn, she approached this process in a way that’s a perfect illustration of the
3R Model, which I’ve used for many years to help others (and frankly, myself)
stay in control of how we Receive, Reflect on, and Respond to feedback. The
process helps put our egos and preconceived notions about ourselves aside and
focus only on the information directly in front of us, to resist our “fight or flight”
instinct, and to turn that feedback into a chance to gain self-awareness.
The process starts with receiving feedback, and Florence had just been given
that gift whether she wanted it or not. And though she was shocked to hear that
she was seen as ambitious, she was also determined not to let her emotions get the
better of her. Pausing for a moment and taking a deep breath, she asked herself
what she was feeling. I am upset, she admitted to herself, but there might be
something valuable for me in this feedback anyway. Florence’s simple but
powerful decision to mine the insight potential in her boss’s feedback led her to
wonder, What am I doing that’s causing him to see me that way? This question
instantly moved her from the passenger seat to the driver’s seat and changed the
conversation from a trial by fire to a fact-finding mission.
But to receive feedback doesn’t mean to listen passively; it means to actively
seek understanding by asking questions. Not only does this give us better
information to go on; it prevents us from flying off the handle or inadvertently
lapsing into denial. Accordingly, Florence summoned the will to calmly ask her
boss a series of questions: “Can you tell me more about what you mean when you
say ‘ambitious’?” “Can you give me a few examples?” “When did you first notice
this behavior?” As he answered, she scribbled down his exact words in her
notebook to refer to later. She thanked him and returned to her office.
For the next few days, Florence let her boss’s feedback rattle around in her
head. After all, she would be in no condition to figure out what it meant, let alone
what to do about it, when her emotions were still getting the better of her.
Interestingly, when it comes to reflecting on feedback (the second step in the 3R
Model), unicorns wisely avoid the temptation to jump in right away. Most
reported giving themselves days or even weeks to bounce back after hearing
something truly surprising or upsetting.
Soon, Florence was ready to figure out what this strange feedback meant and
how to respond to it. To do this, she asked herself three questions. First, do I
understand this feedback? Although she wasn’t as upset as she’d been when she
heard it, she was just as perplexed. So Florence decided to talk to a few loving
critics, collecting more and more insights until she began to understand what her
boss had actually been trying to tell her. Although Florence’s gut reaction had
been to label this feedback as “negative,” she soon learned that her loving critics
had a more nuanced view. Her confidence did sometimes create friction with
people, at least initially, but when they got to know her better, they realized that
she was neither bossy nor pushy—and that her self-assurance gave her a unique
edge.
This then led Florence to ask, how will this affect my long-term success and
well-being? Remember, not all feedback is accurate or important, and as I
mentioned earlier, unicorns are surprisingly picky about what they let in. After
all, as Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius reminds us, “Everything we hear is an
opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” To figure
out what is worth listening to, a good rule of thumb is to look at how pervasive a
particular behavior is. Feedback from one person is a perspective; feedback from
two people is a pattern; but feedback from three or more people is likely to be as
close to a fact as you can get. Florence had clearly heard she was “ambitious”
from so many people that she had to listen. But, she realized, despite the
unfavorable cultural connotations, it wasn’t actually having a negative impact on
her long-term success—if anything, it was helping her accomplish her goals.
This realization propelled Florence to her final question, do I want to act on
this feedback, and if so, how? Sometimes, even when we understand feedback
and determine that it matters, we might decide not to respond to it right away.
Ultimately, it’s up to us to figure out whether making a particular change will
provide a sufficient return for the effort and time it requires.
Florence did decide to respond to the feedback (the final step in the 3R
Model), but not in the way you might expect. This process had led her to discover
that even as a woman in her culture, she didn’t have to be timid. She’d begun to
realize that her unique combination of humility and confidence was not, in fact, a
weakness: it was precisely what would help her achieve great things. And though
she would always consider other people’s feelings and emotions, she was going to
live her life on her own terms.
So instead of changing herself, Florence decided to change the narrative,
starting with her own. With a newfound understanding that her ambition wasn’t a
flaw, she cast aside her cultural preconceptions about the term and embraced it.
“There will always be people who say ‘Don’t climb that high—you will fall,’ ” she
says. “But I don’t listen to them anymore.”
Florence’s chance peek at two words on a piece of paper set in motion a series
of discoveries that didn’t just increase her external self-awareness, but helped lay
the foundation to make a more powerful mark on the world. This is a compelling
lesson: if we can receive feedback with grace, reflect on it with courage, and
respond to it with purpose, we are capable of unearthing unimaginable insights
from the most unlikely of places.
SELF-AFFIRMATION: NOT JUST FOR STUART SMALLEY
When you picture a chess grandmaster, what image comes to mind? Probably
someone who is quiet and serious; perhaps a Bobby Fischer–like image hunched
over a chessboard, or a studious-looking type in a turtleneck and tweed blazer
facing off against a supercomputer. But whatever your mental image, which
gender did you assign to your grandmaster? In all likelihood, your grandmaster
was male, and in this you wouldn’t be alone. This is just one of many unconscious
stereotypes that even the most enlightened people involuntarily possess. But while
many of us are at least somewhat aware of the stereotypes we have about others,
we often lack insight into a more surprising sort of stereotype: the self-limiting
beliefs we hold about ourselves and how others see us. And whether we know
it or not, we all have them.
But how do these stereotypes relate to dealing with feedback and improving
our external self-awareness? Put simply, when we receive difficult feedback in
areas that play into our existing insecurities, it can cut like a knife. Whereas the
feedback Florence received from her boss was (at least initially) critical and
surprising, sometimes feedback can be critical and confirming—in other words, it
backs up a weakness we already believe is there. And unfortunately, the
confirmation of those beliefs can cause us to shut down, feel helpless, or give up
altogether. In a minute, we’ll learn a simple tool to inoculate ourselves against
such responses. But first, let’s see just how harmful our self-limiting beliefs can
be.
In 2014, psychologists Hank Rothgerber and Katie Wolsiefer wanted to learn
whether the stereotype of chess players as being male influenced the performance
of female chess players. Using data from the United States Chess Federation,
they analyzed the stats from a dozen elementary, middle, and high school
scholastic chess tournaments, looking for patterns in how male and female
students fared depending on the gender of their opponents. Just as they predicted,
females paired with male opponents performed significantly worse—a full 20
percent worse—than those paired with other females.
*1 Why? When we hold
negative stereotypes about our abilities—in this case, it was the girls’ belief that
boys were better at chess—our fear of confirming them can become a selffulfilling prophecy, even before we receive any sort of feedback.
This effect was dubbed stereotype threat by psychologists Claude Steele and
Joshua Aronson, and it’s been demonstrated for a variety of stereotyped groups
and in a wide swath of areas. In one of Steele and Aronson’s studies, when
African American students were told that a standardized test was a measure of
intelligence (playing into the prevalent stereotype that they’d underperform their
European American counterparts), that’s exactly what happened. But when the
students weren’t told that the test measured intelligence, both groups scored
similarly. In another study, when researchers reminded collegiate athletes, who
are often stereotyped as poor academic performers, of their “jock” identities,
they scored 12 percent lower than non-athletes on a Graduate Record
Examination (GRE) test.
Stereotype threat doesn’t just hurt performance on individual tests or tasks; it
can seriously limit our long-term success. For many decades since women entered
the workforce en masse, there has been a persistent gender gap in the sciences.
(Despite no inherent differences in ability, women hold only 22 percent of the
science and engineering jobs in the United States.) Many explanations focus on
things like cultural expectations or norms. But a full decade before Sheryl
Sandberg published Lean In, Joyce Erhlinger and David Dunning uncovered
another contributing factor. They asked male and female university students to
rate their ability to reason about science. Several weeks later, they invited those
same students to participate in a supposedly unrelated study of scientific
reasoning. Results revealed that women’s views of their abilities were an average
of 15 percent lower than men’s, regardless of how they performed on the test.
These findings suggest that women’s self-limiting beliefs, and the subsequent
choices they make about which profession to pursue, are likely significant
contributors to the gender gap in the sciences.
Thankfully, there’s a simple intervention we can use to inoculate ourselves
against these self-limiting effects: a process Claude Steele dubbed selfaffirmation. When faced with feedback in an area that plays into our selflimiting beliefs, merely taking a few minutes to remind ourselves of another
important aspect of our identity than the one being threatened shores up our
“psychological immune system.” Let’s say that you’re about to walk into your
performance appraisal after a tough year where you haven’t met your numbers.
One way you can defend yourself against this looming threat is to remember that
you’re a loving parent, or a devoted community volunteer, or a good friend.
This might sound simplistic or pie-in-the-sky, but I can assure you that the
research supports it. For example, psychologist Geoffrey Cohen instructed a
group of African American seventh-graders who were at risk of stereotype threat
to take just 10 minutes at the beginning of the semester to write about their most
important values. At the end of the semester, 70 percent earned higher grades
relative to a group who did not perform the exercise, an improvement which
resulted in a 40-percent reduction in the racial achievement gap. Fascinatingly,
there’s even evidence that self-affirmation buffers our physical responses to
threat—it reduces our levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which helps us think
more rationally and not lose sight of the bigger picture.
*2
If you’ve ever seen Al Franken’s character Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night
Live, the self-affirmation process might conjure images of a pudgy man in a
yellow sweater standing in front of a mirror repeating in a calm, monotone voice,
“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” Indeed, on
the face of it, isn’t saying that we’re great no matter what tantamount to the Feel
Good Effect? Might self-affirmation simply result in our trivializing tough
feedback or explaining it away?
This couldn’t be further from the truth. And though the Stuart Smalley
character probably did a lot for the ratings of Saturday Night Live, he did a
disservice to the science of self-affirmation by portraying it in such a comical
light. The rigorous scientific research on the practice clearly shows that, rather
than causing us to trivialize what we hear, it actually helps us be more open to
difficult feedback. And though self-affirmation for its own sake might veer into
Feel Good Effect territory, strategically using it to shore ourselves up can help us
hear tough truths. According to researcher David Sherman, self-affirmation
makes us “more open to ideas that would otherwise be too painful to accept.”
After all, when we remember the greater picture of who we are, we can put
seemingly threatening information in its proper perspective.
I learned this lesson myself a few years ago. Right around the time I started
working on this book, I was getting ready to attend a holiday party thrown by an
old high school friend. And to put it mildly, I’d had a pretty bad day. Like many
authors I know, when I’m writing a book, I cycle between two polar-opposite
emotions: euphoric excitement and crippling self-doubt (my husband has dubbed
it ABD, or Author Bipolar Disorder). I had been working on a few central
sections and struggling to synthesize some of our study’s findings. Earlier that
week, after what felt like a million false starts, I had finally cobbled a few
thoughts together. But I was worried that they weren’t working, so I’d shot them
over to a friend of mine who works in publishing to get his take.
Much to my horror, he was even less impressed than I thought he would be.
Because I was already feeling deeply insecure, his comments sent me into a spiral
of even greater self-doubt. What’s worse, I received my friend’s feedback less
than an hour before I had to leave for the party. Naturally, I spent that hour
sulking around and wondering if I should even go. To hell with it, I thought, if I
do, at least I can forget about my book for a few hours.
As I arrived at the warm, cozy restaurant with fogged-up windows and
Christmas carols playing on the jukebox, I was elated to see many familiar faces I
hadn’t seen in years. For context, my high school experience was an uncommonly
positive one. (Luckily, you didn’t get stuffed in lockers for getting good grades or
doing theater, otherwise I would have really been in trouble.) An evening
reminiscing with my old friends was just what I needed. And to my surprise, I
didn’t think about the book even once.
When I returned home later that night, a dull, sweet pang of nostalgia washed
over me. Things were so easy back then, I wistfully recalled. But at the same time,
I noticed that I also felt a welcome sense of perspective on my writing struggles.
My high school self never shrank in the face of a challenge. Why would my
current self be any different? I drifted off to sleep that night with a feeling of
peaceful resolve—tomorrow I would figure out my vexing book problem, no
matter what—and slept better than I had in a long time.
The next morning, I dragged myself out of bed and, coffee in hand, padded to
my office. I felt the same sensation of dread that I’d felt most mornings that
week. I will figure this out, I kept repeating to myself. And just as I was about to
fall into another ruminative pit of despair, something clicked. All of a sudden, I
saw the material in a new way—a way that made much, much more sense. By the
end of the day, I’d sent my revisions to my friend to review, and to my utter
relief, he loved them. I realized that the party had been more than just an
enjoyable night with old friends; it had provided powerful self-affirmation that
helped me put my friend’s feedback—feedback that tapped into my deepest fears
and insecurities—into perspective. That affirmation kept my self-limiting beliefs
at bay, and inspired me to tackle the challenge anew.
My own anecdotal experience aside, researchers have recently discovered that
reminiscing can indeed be a powerful mechanism for self-affirmation. For
instance, researcher Matthew Vess and his colleagues asked undergraduate
psychology students to recall a positive memory from their past before receiving
negative feedback about their performance on an analytical reasoning test. Those
who reminisced weren’t just less defensive; counterintuitively, they were also less
likely to hold delusional beliefs about their abilities. Other studies have shown
that reminiscing reduces rumination and increases well-being.
So whether you self-affirm by evoking the past or remembering your most
important values, you can inoculate yourself against threatening feedback and
hear it less defensively. Regardless of the approach you use, though, research has
shown that self-affirmation is most effective when you do it before getting
threatening feedback. And though it can sometimes sneak up on us, as it did in
Florence’s case, there are times when we can anticipate this kind of feedback,
especially when we’ve sought it out on our own terms. So when you know
difficult feedback might be coming, spend a few minutes shoring yourself up
first. Think of self-affirmation as an insurance policy: what you hear might not be
a catastrophe, but if it is, you’ll be covered.
THE FLAWS IN OUR FABRIC: WHEN CHANGE ISN’T AN OPTION
Entrepreneur Levi King was born and raised on a farm in rural Idaho. After
paying his way through college by working at an electric sign manufacturing
company, he started a sign business of his own shortly after graduation. He sold it
for a healthy profit when he was just 23 years old, and then went on to start a
financial services company. But a few years later, a seemingly innocuous action
sent Levi down the road to one of the most difficult—but important—insights of
his career.
He had just fired a new sales rep for what he thought were extremely clear-cut
reasons. But his business partner, who’d hired the now-ex-rep, disagreed.
Naturally, both men believed they were right and the other was wrong. Eventually
the conflict morphed into an all-out argument about who was the better leader.
The partners decided to settle the question empirically: they would each take a
360 assessment, learn the truth from their teams, and compare their findings.
When the results came in, Levi was sure he’d be vindicated.
But the truth wasn’t so rosy. His team rated him lower on many measures than
he’d expected, and worse yet, all of the things he fancied himself to be best at,
like communication, were the things his team thought he did most poorly. This
was a turning point for Levi. He realized that he could either, in his words,
“double down and become an even bigger asshole, or learn what the heck I was
doing wrong.” He chose the latter and embarked on a process to better understand
his communication style and leadership behaviors.
Yet after reading many books on brain science and communication, Levi came
to the informed conclusion that he might never truly be successful at being
personable, no matter how much work he put in. It just wasn’t, he discovered,
how he was wired. At this point, you’re probably assuming that I’m about to tell
you about how he pushed through this barrier, worked on himself, and emerged
from the process a master communicator. But that’s not what happened. Instead,
Levi accepted that communication would never be his forte. And he was okay
with that.
But was this wise? After earning these hard-won insights, shouldn’t he have
worked harder to turn them into action? Here’s the truth: in the process of moving
from mirror to prism, we will sometimes uncover things that will be difficult to
change—flaws that are woven throughout the fabric of who we are. The best
way to manage our weaknesses isn’t always clear-cut, but the first step is to
openly admit them to ourselves, and then to others. Sometimes we can make
small changes that have a big payoff. Occasionally, we can completely transform.
But in a few cases, the right response is, as they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, to
accept the things we cannot change. That’s exactly what Levi did.
Now armed with this insight, it was time for him to come clean to his team.
Because his employees had given input to his 360, he knew they were wondering
what came of it, and he wanted to be open about the whole thing anyway. So he
called a company meeting, which he began by thanking them for their feedback.
He then explained how he’d come to the conclusion that working on his social
skills wouldn’t yield meaningful returns. “In the future, it’s unlikely that I will tell
you good morning,” he told them. “I’ll forget your birthday. You’ll have a baby
and I won’t remember to say anything to you about it.” A sinking feeling engulfed
the room—his employees wondered why on earth their boss was telling them all
this, and what it could possibly mean.
As if he was reading their minds, Levi continued, “But I do care about you—
deeply—and I want to tell you how I am going to show you that. I’ll show you by
giving you a safe place to work. I’ll show you by confirming that your paychecks
clear. I’ll show you by making sure you find meaning in what you do. Those are
things I can promise you.”
To Levi’s great surprise, the act of openly acknowledging these new truths paid
off in ways he could have never imagined. Now that his team knew that he
understood his biggest weakness, they no longer saw him as a too-big-for-hisbritches, 25-year-old punk. They could even see the humor in situations where he
was behaving badly. One day not long after his bare-all meeting, he was trying to
make small talk with his head of HR and finance. He wanted to say something
nice to her and noticed that she was wearing a shirt with a flower detail on the
sleeves. “That’s a nice shirt,” he attempted.
“How weird,” she replied, “you don’t normally compliment me on what I
wear.”
“That’s because you don’t wear nice things—normally you just wear plain old
T-shirts.” And instantly, she burst out laughing.
It’s been 10 years (and five more successful start-ups) since Levi’s 360. And
he’s found that admitting—and often letting his team playfully joke about—his
weaknesses has helped him reach a new level of success. Case in point, his
current business credit and financing company, Nav, is growing profitably. And
as a testament to Levi’s leadership, it boasts unheard-of retention figures for the
tech world. This is all to say that when it comes to surprising and critical
feedback, though changing is often a good option, it’s not the only option.
Sometimes being self-aware simply means admitting these flaws to ourselves—
and to our colleagues, our employees, our friends, and our families—while setting
expectations for how we are likely to behave. And as they say, when we let go of
the things we cannot change, it frees up the energy to focus on changing the
things we can.
So far in this chapter, we’ve seen many examples of people who learned how to
cope with disquieting feedback. But it’s worth mentioning that building our
external self-awareness isn’t always about learning all the things we’re doing
poorly. It’s also about better understanding our unique strengths, skills, and
contributions—and leveraging these insights for greater personal success. In the
process of learning the truth about how we’re seen, we’re just as likely to
encounter pleasant surprises as unpleasant ones.
I had an experience a few years ago that serves as a perfect example of what
happens when we get positive and surprising feedback. I met Tom when I was
teaching a strategy course to a group of corporate leaders. Tom was a selfprofessed “engineer’s engineer”—a classic introvert who wasn’t “very good with
people.” Tom told me that even though he loved engineering, he was feeling
stalled and unfulfilled in his current role. I asked what he’d be doing if he could
have any job in the world. He thought for a moment and replied that he didn’t
know, but that he was sure it wouldn’t involve another promotion. “I just can’t get
anyone to listen to me,” he explained matter-of-factly. “I’m not very influential.”
When I asked why, he simply shrugged and said that engineers aren’t usually very
good at “people stuff.”
“Why don’t I observe you this week and tell you whether or not I agree?” I
offered. He consented, and we shook on it.
During our last evening together, the class was beginning an elaborate teambuilding activity. They were gathered in an immense hotel ballroom, surrounded
by tables piled high with building supplies—PVC pipes, wood, hammers, ladders,
etc. Their task was to construct a device that moved a marble from one end of the
room to another. But things had gotten off to a bad start. Accustomed to always
being the smartest one in the room, these leaders were having a hard time
listening to each other’s ideas. Naturally, they weren’t making progress on the task
at hand, and I could see them getting more frustrated by the minute.
All of a sudden, I heard a loud, confident voice break through the cacophony—
and to my utter surprise, it was Tom. He had climbed almost to the top of one of
the ladders and was smiling ear to ear, clearly fired up about the engineering
problem they’d been asked to solve. But given what he had told me about his
people skills, I braced myself for a disaster. “OK, gang,” he began, “many of you
know my background is in engineering. I don’t have all the answers, but I have a
few ideas. Tell me what you think about this…”
Just like that, the tone of the conversation changed. All of a sudden, people
were listening instead of talking. They were cooperating instead of arguing. They
were engaged instead of checked out. And they finished their task far faster than
I would have predicted.
I sat there watching, completely dumbfounded as Tom’s exuberant team
members showered him with handshakes and high-fives. Afterward, I rushed up
to him, grabbed his shoulders, and shouted, “Tom! Do you know what you just
did?! That is the single most powerful example of influence I’ve seen this whole
week!” I was even more astonished to see him looking back at me blankly, unsure
of what he’d just done to warrant such an effusive compliment.
Tom and I spent the rest of the evening talking. Seeing him wrestle with this
new, positive data about himself was an important reminder: surprising
feedback can often open our eyes to strengths we never knew we had. And
though this new information initially threw Tom’s whole self-image into question
(after all, he had spent essentially his entire career believing in his ineffectuality
at influencing others), by looking through the prism rather than just at his own
reflection, he could now see a richer, more complete image of who he was. He
had always been a natural leader—he just needed a bit of help to see what was
already there. Tom felt a renewed focus, not just in his career, but in his life.
“You know what? I am going to apply for that promotion,” he told me, “I think
I’ll do well.” And that he did.
While Tom’s strength came as a surprise, sometimes an outside perspective can
reaffirm a positive quality that we hope we have in a way that helps us make more
confident decisions. Kelsey, a unicorn, worked as a geologist for the first eight
years of his career. But with each passing month, his interest in leaving to become
a teacher grew stronger. Eventually, the urge was too powerful to resist, and he
left his job and applied to a master’s program in education.
When Kelsey announced the decision to his friends and family, he was
surprised and gratified by their response. They gushed, “You’re going to be a
great teacher! You’re so patient! I’d be lucky to have my kids in your class.” As if
that wasn’t enough validation, when word of his choice spread around his tightknit community, neighbors Kelsey didn’t know particularly well came out of the
woodwork to tell him what a smart choice he was making. Even though they’d
never seen him teach, it seemed that his reputation had preceded him.
When he’d initially made his decision, Kelsey wasn’t sure if he’d made the right
choice—he suspected he might have it in him to be an effective teacher, but how
could he be sure? His neighbors’ and friends’ feedback had given him the boost of
confidence he needed. What’s more, he figured, if people saw him this way, he
now had an obligation to live up to their expectations. Fast-forward to today: he’s
thriving as a middle-school science teacher, his students love him, and he’s
proven to be a powerful force in the classroom.
At the end of the day, as Ben Franklin put it at the beginning of this chapter,
when we “seek information and improvement from the knowledge of others,”
there are quite a few outcomes and a few potential courses of action. When we
learn something critical and surprising, we can work to change, like Steve; to
reframe the feedback, like Florence; or to embrace it and be open about it, like
Levi. When we learn something critical and confirming—that is, something that
reinforces our prior insecurities or vulnerabilities—we can use self-affirmation to
channel it productively and work to minimize the impact of that weakness on our
careers and our lives. With positive and surprising feedback, we can
acknowledge and further invest in our newfound strengths, like Tom. And finally,
as we saw with Kelsey, positive and confirming feedback gives us the
confidence we need to continue on our chosen paths.
And regardless of how surprising or upsetting or gratifying that feedback may
feel, reflecting on it and responding to it are far, far better than the alternative. As
author Marianne Williamson once said, “It takes courage…to endure the sharp
pains of self-discovery rather than choose…the dull pain of unconsciousness that
would last the rest of our lives.” The most successful, fulfilled, and self-aware
people are simply not content with this dull pain. They take charge, bravely
seeking out the truth on their own terms, making sense of it, and using it to
improve where they can—all the while knowing that the occasional sharp pains of
self-discovery are absolutely worth it.
*1 However, for this effect to emerge, she had to be matched up with a moderately to highly
competent (as opposed to an incompetent) male opponent.
*2 In one study, Stage I and II breast cancer patients who completed a self-affirmation exercise
coped better with stress—and even showed fewer physical symptoms—a full three months
later compared to those who hadn’t done the exercise.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may
deride it, but in the end, there it is.
—WINSTON CHURCHILL
As Mike appeared in the doorway, his boss smiled warmly. Not only was Mike a
brilliant and talented aeronautical engineer; he was the 25-year-old manager’s
very first employee—and in a very short time, Mike’s boss had grown quite fond
of him.
“Mike!” he said. “Great to see you. Come in. Do you have your latest
coordination sheet for me?”
“I do,” said Mike, slapping the sheet onto the desk with surprising force. “But
before you suggest any more changes, I just want to let you know that I’m
quitting.”
Mike’s boss was stunned. He had worked hard to instill his attention to detail
and commitment to excellence in this eager engineer, sparing nothing in helping
Mike tackle all of the challenges their work presented. “Wh—what? Why are you
quitting?” he stammered, his smile now replaced by a look of abject panic.
“Because you are driving me nuts!” said Mike. “This is my fourteenth round of
revisions.”
“But I just want—”
“We’re at the point of diminishing returns here, sir.” said the young engineer.
“I just think that it would be better for both of us if I moved on.”
Mike’s boss was shaken to the core. He could barely speak. “I would hate to see
you go,” he pleaded. “Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”
But before his boss could even finish asking the question, Mike shouted, “No! I
have to get away from you!” and left abruptly. My management career sure doesn’t
seem to be off to a very good start, the rejected leader realized as he stared
helplessly out the window.
A few days passed, and Mike’s now former boss asked if he would be willing
to share what had gone wrong. And Mike did—in excruciating detail. Apparently,
the young leader had a big problem. His nitpicking went beyond
micromanagement: he seemed to think that his way was the only way. He’d been
trying to teach Mike to think exactly like him, work exactly like him, and be
exactly like him. Though Mike wanted to learn from his manager, he certainly
didn’t want to become him.
Mike’s boss never forgot that feedback. Though it was hard to hear, it turned
out to be the alarm-clock moment that marked the beginning of his incredible
journey as a leader. You see, Mike’s boss was 25-year-old Alan Mulally, the
unicorn and future CEO who would go on to save not just one, but two of
America’s most iconic businesses: Boeing Commercial Airplanes and the Ford
Motor Company.
In a 2012 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Kansas,
Mulally coined a term for those moments of unexpected insight that challenge our
beliefs about who we are. “A gem,” he explains, “is a learning that enables us to
reevaluate what we’re doing.” And the gem he received from Mike that day was
that it was wrong to try to make employees in his own image. That as a leader, his
role wasn’t to control their every move, but instead to help connect them with the
bigger picture, to give them the right tools, and to provide them the space to
make mistakes but still hold them accountable.
Grabbing my arm and grinning as he recounted the story, Mulally exclaimed, “I
was so lucky that Mike made me aware of this behavior so early in my
management career! Can you imagine if no one had told me for years, or for
decades? What a gift!”
Up until now, we’ve focused on self-awareness at an individual level. In this
chapter, we’ll explore what self-aware teams and organizations look like, and
what you as a leader can do to get yours there. As Alan Mulally learned at a
young age, such teams start with a self-aware leader who makes a commitment to
instill insight into the very fabric of the team and organization. Indeed, Mulally
believes that this passion for creating collective awareness was one of the key
factors in his immense success. As he told me, “Every time you learn something
that isn’t working in yourself, your team, or your organization, you have a gem on
your hands. Here is something we know now, that we can work on. I really can’t
think of anything more exciting. If you don’t know what’s going on, that’s what’s
really terrifying.”
This chapter will help you discover these kinds of “gems” in the team or
company you lead, too. And even though we’ll focus on teams in a business
setting, you’ll likely find other applications outside the workplace: your
immediate and extended family, religious or community groups, school projects,
PTA, garage bands, beer-league hockey teams, etc. (And by the way, if you’re not
in a formal or informal leadership position, I’ll show you how to deal with
unaware bosses and peers in the next chapter.) You’ll discover that no matter
what kind of team you’re leading, whether you have one direct report or a
thousand, you can’t create awareness by just waking up one day and deciding that
everyone should be brutally honest with each other. In fact, without laying the
foundation, you might find yourself with more trouble on your hands than you
had to begin with. But while teams rarely start out self-aware, with the right
ingredients, most can get there and reap the substantial rewards that such insight
brings.
It was a chilly November morning in Dearborn, Michigan. As Ford executive
Mark Fields walked into the Thunderbird Room on the 11th floor of the
company’s world headquarters, he had, by his estimation, a 50-50 chance of
walking out without his job as president of the company’s Americas region.
The year was 2006, and Ford was on the brink of bankruptcy. Saddled with
sky-high cycle times, plummeting quality levels, astronomical labor costs, and
rising fuel prices, Ford’s business model had become untenable. Unable to
compete domestically or internationally, the company had lost a whopping 25
percent of its market share over the last 15 years. But these failings most certainly
weren’t due to a lack of effort by the man in the top job.
Forty-four-year-old chairman and CEO Bill Ford had taken the reins four years
earlier to try to save his great-grandfather’s company. He was sharp, self-aware,
and possessed a humility and work ethic that belied his privileged upbringing.
When he assumed his role in 2001, he’d promised that the company would hit $7
billion in profit in five years. But though he briefly got Ford back in the black
that same year, by 2006, the company was facing its worst yearly loss in its
history—almost $17 billion. After five years of herculean efforts (during which
he never took a salary), Ford was finally forced to come face-to-face with the
reality that he couldn’t save his beloved company on his own.
In truth, the organization’s problems ran far deeper than it appeared. It wasn’t
just their flawed business model or inability to grapple with increasing global
competition; these things were certainly issues, but they were merely symptoms
of a larger ailment. As journalist Bryce Hoffman described in his superb book
about Ford’s turnaround, American Icon:
[Bill] Ford found himself unable to overcome an entrenched,
careerist culture that resisted all change and put individual
advancement ahead of corporate success. In their dark-paneled
offices, executives plotted ways to undermine one another’s efforts,
while on the factory floor, union bosses jealously defended their
members’ rich benefits and scoffed at attempts to boost
productivity.
The company’s culture, in other words, was completely broken. And in July of
2006, Bill Ford announced to the board that he wasn’t up to the challenge of
fixing it: “This company means a lot to me. I have a lot tied up in it. But the one
thing I don’t is my ego…help me find a solution.”
*1 Although his successor is
credited with one of the most impressive turnarounds in corporate history, it was
Bill Ford’s unflinching self-awareness that made it possible.
That help would come in the form of 61-year-old Alan Mulally, the thenpresident and CEO of Boeing’s Commercial Airplane division, a spirited, redhaired Kansan with a track record of technical excellence, bottom-line results,
and most importantly, dramatic turnarounds. After 37 years at Boeing, Mulally
had not only saved the company from near-bankruptcy in the aftermath of 9/11;
he’d led their program to design the 777—the five-year, $5 billion project that
single-handedly propelled Boeing ahead of its competition for years to come.
From the moment he arrived at Ford’s world headquarters on September 5,
2006, it was clear that Mulally was radically different from his predecessors. In
an industry plagued by megalomania, secrecy, and paranoia, he was open,
approachable, and completely unpretentious. He ate in the employee cafeteria and
greeted strangers with a hug, a kiss, or a pat on the back. But those who confused
Mulally’s agreeableness for weakness were quickly disabused of that notion. A
friend of his once remarked, “Don’t mistake Alan’s smile for a lack of purpose or
awareness. The man has a backbone of titanium.”
Mulally knew that the foundational challenge of Ford’s turnaround wouldn’t be
improving fuel efficiency standards, or simplifying their product mix, or getting
costs under control (though he would certainly do all of those things). Rather, it
would be to start transforming the company’s secretive, change-resistant, siloed
culture into a more open, collaborative, transparent one. And in his very first
press conference as CEO, Mulally made it clear that under his leadership, the
truth would be king: when asked what model of car he drove, he stunned
reporters by replying, “A Lexus. It’s the finest car in the world.” (It’s worth noting
that Ford’s executives didn’t drive Fords, either, stealthily parking their Jaguars
and Land Rovers in the garage beneath the company’s world headquarters. They
just weren’t admitting it to reporters.)
One thing was clear from the outset: if Mulally was going to transform his new
company’s culture, he had to start with his executive team. The first change he
introduced was a weekly meeting to review the status of the business, which he
called the Business Process Review, or BPR. Replacing all other pointless and
inefficient corporate-level meetings, the purpose of the BPR was awareness—to
ensure that everyone knew the plan, the status of that plan, and the reality
of the challenges the company was facing.
The BPR would be held on the same day and at the same time each week—
Thursday mornings at 7:00 a.m.—and it would be mandatory for all members of
the executive team. They’d review 320 metrics on everything from vehicle
launches to revenue streams to productivity. Each metric would be assigned a
color: green if it was on track, yellow if it had potential problems, and red if it
had definite ones. Each of Mulally’s nine executives would have 10 minutes to
deliver a succinct report on, as Mulally puts it, “their respective progress toward
creating an exciting, viable, profitable, and growing Ford for the good of all
stakeholders.” Mulally emphasized that this meeting would be safe—that no one
should hesitate to surface problems and no one would be punished for telling the
truth. There would be a learning curve, he told them, so if they didn’t know
something, that was okay. “We’ll all be here again next week…and I know you’ll
know it then.”
Ford’s first BPR took place on September 28, 2006. Mulally’s team had no idea
what to expect as they nervously streamed into the Thunderbird Room, many
with lieutenants in tow and all toting heavy three-ring binders. They took their
seats at the large round wooden conference table, and Mulally called the meeting
to order. First, he repeated his vision: People working together as a lean global
enterprise for automotive leadership. To get there, he reminded them, everyone
would have to be open about everything that was going on in their area of the
business. “This is the only way I know how to operate,” he said. “We need to have
everybody involved. We need everybody to be aware. And we’ll work together to
turn the reds to yellow and then to green.”
Although early BPRs took as many as seven hours, by October, the team had
settled into a rhythm. Unfortunately, however, the process still left something to
be desired. Despite the fact that the company was at the risk of extinction, every
chart that every executive presented in every meeting was green. This was, as
Bryce Hoffman quips, “nothing short of bovine scatology.” Things weren’t
“green”; they were far from it, and Mulally knew it.
One week, after being presented with yet another forest of verdant charts, he
decided he’d had enough. “Guys,” he said, interrupting the meeting. “We’re going
to lose seventeen billion dollars this year and all the charts are green.” No one
said anything. “Do you think there’s anything that’s not going well? Maybe even
just one little thing?”
The meeting room filled with a thick and itchy silence. Seats were shuffled in,
throats were cleared, and eyes darted toward patent-leather shoes. The executives
smelled danger. And they knew exactly what would happen to the first fool to
show a red slide: the framed family portrait on their desk would be at the bottom
of a cardboard box before lunch. This whole exercise was surely a trick.
Mulally tried to allay their fears. “We’re not going to be able to manage a
secret,” he said. “The idea is that we can share what the situation is and help each
other.” He looked around the room once more. Yet again, seats were shuffled
upon, throats were cleared, and eyes darted toward shoes. The executives hadn’t
felt safe bringing up problems under the previous leadership, so why should this
new hotshot CEO be any different?
The days passed and the drill remained the same. Green slides, green slides,
and more green slides. The truth, of course, was far less rosy. Take, for example,
what was happening with the company’s much-hyped first crossover vehicle, the
Ford Edge. It was in full production and just weeks away from its much-
anticipated launch when mechanics at the factory in Oakville, Ontario, discovered
a problem with an actuator on the lift gate. This left the executive responsible for
the Edge, Mark Fields, with no option but to call the entire operation to a halt.
As 10,000 lonely Ford Edges languished on the halted assembly lines, Fields
was rather on edge himself. This, he figured, was the catastrophe that would cost
him his job. After all, he’d been the man in charge of Ford’s turnaround strategy
before Mulally’s arrival and he suspected he was seen as a threat to the new CEO.
For longer than he cared to think about, the entire company had been buzzing
with rumors of his imminent dismissal. This business with the Edge couldn’t have
come at a worse time. But he figured he could do his colleagues one final favor:
he’d call Mulally’s bluff. Somebody has to figure out if this guy is for real, he
thought. If I go out, it might as well be in a blaze of glory.
And with the fearlessness of a man who had nothing to lose, as Fields and his
team prepared for the next day’s BPR, he decided to list the product-launch
metric as red.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” asked one member of Fields’ executive
team.
Fields answered with a question, “Is the launch on track?” The executive shook
his head.
“Well then,” Fields told him, “we’re going to make it red.” Everyone
skeptically looked at him as if to say “Good luck with that.”
So when Fields walked into the BPR on that chilly November morning, he
really had no idea of how things would play out. He figured the best-case scenario
was that he’d get reamed out but keep his job. Worst case, he’d get reamed out
and be shown the door. Never did it dawn on him that there was another possible
outcome.
That week’s BPR began as it always did. His colleagues presented their slides
—and as usual, it was a veritable forest of green. Then it was Fields’ turn. As
Mulally recalls, “Up came the red slide. And WHOOM—the air went out of the
room.”
Fields cleared his throat. “On the Edge,” he said, “we have an actuator issue, so
we had to delay the launch.” The entire room cringed as one. “We don’t know the
solution, but we’re working on it.” As Mulally recalls, this was the moment when
people thought, Well, that’s that. Two large men are going to burst into the room,
grab Mark, and cart him off, and we’ll never see him again.
And then, in the midst of that heaviest of silences came a surprising sound:
Alan Mulally’s exuberant applause. “Mark, this is great visibility!” he grinned.
Turning to his team, he asked, “What can we do to help him out?” Right away,
one of the executives suggested a solution, and they were off and running.
After all this, Mulally was optimistic that finally, the executive team would
have their first successful BPR. Yet the next week, to his great disappointment,
all the slides were still green. But Mulally’s team saw something that day that
spoke volumes. When they entered the Thunderbird Room, Mark Fields was
sitting right next to a smiling Mulally. Not only had he not been fired, he had
actually been commended. This was evidently the final proof that the cynical and
battle-weary executives needed. They actually believed it now—they were in a
new world. The following week, the decks they brought to the BPR were a
glorious rainbow of red and yellow gems.
According to Mulally, if there was a single defining moment in Ford’s
turnaround, this was it. Up until that point, Ford’s executives had been afraid to
surface problems; to tell each other the truth; to give and receive honest
feedback. The same mentality that had kept them MUM about the realities of the
business also kept them MUM about their individual failures, team dysfunctions,
and cultural challenges. But now, for the first time, the team was confronting
reality.
From that point forward, they were on the open road (no pun intended) to selfawareness, on many levels. As individuals, they understood expectations and were
facing their limiting beliefs and behaviors; as a team, they knew the business
environment, the plan, and the status of that plan. But it wasn’t just the executive
team who possessed this information. Everyone in the company was trusted and
expected to know the direction, the role they played, and how things were going.
This information also flowed to their stakeholders outside the organization—their
customers, investors, dealers, suppliers, and the public.
And the results speak for themselves. By 2009, in the midst of the biggest
economic crisis since the Great Depression, Ford was back in the black, and it
was the only one of the “Big Three” American carmakers who didn’t take a cent
of taxpayer bailout money. By 2011, their profit had swelled to more than $20
billion. It was their second-most profitable year in history.
If being individually self-aware means understanding who you are and
how others see you, a self-aware team commits to that same understanding
at a collective level. More specifically, there are five things that self-aware teams
regularly assess and address: I call them the Five Cornerstones of Collective
Insight. First, their objectives: what are they trying to achieve? Second, their
progress toward those objectives: how are they doing? Third, the processes
they’re employing to achieve their objectives: how are they getting there? Fourth,
their assumptions about the business and their environment: do they hold true?
And finally, their individual contributions: what impact is each team member
having on the team’s performance?
As a result of their collective insight, self-aware teams are more efficient,
more effective, more innovative, and more rewarding to be a part of.
Unfortunately, as many can attest and studies often show, few teams are naturally
self-aware. After all, it’s hard enough to cultivate self-awareness in ourselves
without the added challenge of our pesky peer relationships. And while our boss
is theoretically required to tell us the truth once a year in our performance
appraisal, our teammates have no such obligations. Though the people who work
alongside us every day are often the ones with the most critical information about
how we’re doing, they’re usually the most likely to stay MUM. This constant
ambiguity doesn’t just sap our confidence and stoke our paranoia (remember,
your peers are probably sharing what they think about you with everyone but
you); it can also be damaging—even fatal—to a team’s collective success.
The Five Cornerstones of Collective Insight can admittedly be difficult to
achieve. Not only does the MUM effect make people reluctant to share this
information, they often see individual feedback as a “nice to have” rather than an
essential ingredient for success. Yet though leaders should take their team’s
tentativeness to tell the truth seriously, they needn’t be disheartened by it. With
the right approach and a true ongoing commitment, you can foster a culture that
encourages communication and feedback at all levels; one where honesty trumps
hierarchy and even the lowest-ranking member feels safe putting problems on the
table.
Specifically, there are Three Building Blocks that must be in place for a leader
to drive a self-aware team. First, if the team doesn’t have a leader who models
the way, the process will be seen as insincere or even dangerous. Second, if there
isn’t the psychological safety to tell the truth, the chance of candid feedback is
almost zero. But even with all this in place, you also need an ongoing process—
not unlike Mulally’s BPR—to ensure that the exchange of feedback isn’t just a
one-time thing but rather is built into the team’s culture.
In a moment, we’ll look at each of these building blocks a bit more closely. But
before we do so, it’s worth mentioning a critically important point. If your team
doesn’t have a clear and compelling direction, you are missing the reason to
become self-aware in the first place. Imagine if Alan Mulally’s team at Ford had
started having BPRs without a solid, mutually understood set of goals. As Mulally
explains, “If you don’t have a vision, a smart strategy, and a detailed plan to get
there, the process of self-awareness is just talking.” In other words, if a team
doesn’t know where it’s headed, they are missing the “because” of selfawareness, and trying to get there would therefore be both frivolous and
pointless!
Building Block #1: A Leader Who Models the Way
When Doug Suttles first stepped onto the platform of the 250-by-200-foot oil rig
in the middle of the North Sea, he recognized that his new assignment would test
both his technical and interpersonal skills. What he didn’t know was that he was
about to learn one of the most important leadership lessons of his career. Suttles,
a mechanical engineer by training, had just been appointed BP’s offshore
installation manager of the Miller platform in the North Sea, just off the coast of
Scotland. On top of their number-one objective, which was keeping everyone
safe, Suttles had been tasked with improving the rig’s operating performance.
And not only was he the sole non-Brit on the rig, he was also one of the youngest
people there.
This unique situation presented Suttles with a few unique challenges. For one,
he would be living with his 196 new teammates—in close quarters and many
miles out at sea. He quickly discovered that in this multifaceted role of boss/ship
captain/counselor, he wasn’t just on display during working hours—his team had
eyes on him virtually around the clock. Even the smallest choices spoke volumes:
Would he sit with managers or technicians at dinner? Would he participate in
their weekly TV game show? How well would he help them deal with the
interpersonal problems that such close quarters tend to breed?
Though Suttles had always been a big believer in cultivating self-awareness, his
time on the rig provided him with a new and critical insight. Whether or not he
was living in close quarters in the middle of the ocean, because he was a leader,
each and every choice his people saw him make would serve as a model,
profoundly influencing their attitudes, their behaviors, and their overall
effectiveness.
Many years later, this lesson would help Suttles manage an absolutely
unthinkable crisis. On April 20, 2010, the crew of the Deepwater Horizon, an oil
rig located in the Gulf of Mexico just off the coast of Louisiana, was settling in
for the evening. Earlier that day, BP officials and workers had gathered to
celebrate seven years of operation without a single injury. At around 9:45 p.m.,
23-year-old Andrea Fleytas was monitoring the computer system that maintains
the vessel’s position in the water when she felt a sudden jolt. A few minutes later,
the crew heard a loud hissing sound. Then came the massive explosion that would
ultimately kill 11 people, injure 17 others, and spout an estimated 4.9 million
barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
Suttles was chief operating officer of BP’s exploration and production division
when he was tapped to lead the company’s response to the largest oil spill in
history. In the midst of this massive emergency, it would certainly be easy to
incite panic, to place blame, or to speak without thinking. (Many BP leaders fell
prey to these traps, none more notably than CEO Tony Hayward, who made
headlines by calling the spill “relatively tiny” and telling the press that he’d “like
[his] life back.”) But recalling his time on the North Sea rig, Suttles reminded
himself to model the way, no matter how difficult things became.
Suttles’ response team of BP employees, private contractors, and government
workers faced a cacophony of criticism—both legitimate and spurious—from the
government, the media, and the public. Which made it even more important for
him to ensure that each of the Five Cornerstones of Collective Insight was in
place: awareness and communication about their objectives, their progress, their
processes, their assumptions, and their contributions, starting with his own.
Suttles was self-aware enough to know that in such a complex and emotionally
charged situation, there would inevitably be mistakes. He also knew they would
need to fix them quickly. To do so, the team would have to remain cool-headed
and not take criticism personally—and the only way that could happen was if
Suttles was willing to acknowledge his own missteps, model emotional control,
and handle the crisis calmly.
His team faced what seemed like every possible obstacle until finally, on July
15, they stopped the leak. By September 19, they’d managed to seal it completely.
The lesson is that no matter what challenges you’re facing, self-aware teams must
begin with a self-aware leader who models the way. “It’s easy to get isolated at
the top,” Suttles told me, “But if your team isn’t performing as you’d like, the first
place to look is at yourself. If I glance over my shoulder and there’s nobody back
there, that’s called feedback. If I glance over my shoulder and people are
following me, that’s probably a good sign.”
Or, as Alan Mulally once told me, “How far the team gets is completely
dependent on the leader’s level of self-awareness.”
So how can leaders model the way? At the most basic level, as Doug Suttles
and Alan Mulally have shown us, a leader must communicate her principles and
act in accordance with them. Psychologists often refer to this constellation of
behaviors as “authentic leadership,” and their business value is unmistakable. For
example, when researcher Joanne Lyubovnikova and her colleagues surveyed
teams in a variety of industries across the United Kingdom and Greece, they
found that those led by authentic leaders were more self-aware and, in turn, more
productive than those with less self-aware leaders.
And these effects aren’t just confined to the corporate world; they also extend
to our homes and families. In one study, when mothers could successfully
identify and manage their emotions, their children were happier and more selfaware a full year later. Having seen self-awareness modeled through a parent,
they were more likely to develop this valuable skill themselves.
On the flip side, it doesn’t take a degree in psychology to know that human
beings have amazing BS detectors. When we sense that leaders aren’t being
authentic—whether they’re intentionally misleading us or simply behaving in
opposition to their values—we can smell it a mile away. This causes team
members to avoid bringing up issues for fear of retribution, as Mulally’s
executive team initially did, and reality gets buried under a torrent of excuses and
finger-pointing.
However, when a leader commits to confronting his flaws while also striving to
improve, his team is motivated to do the same. In fact, this is a great example of
preeminent psychologist Albert Bandura’s theory of social learning, which
suggests that followers tend to imitate the attitudes and behaviors of their leader.
When a leader is authentic, team members learn that it’s not just okay but
expected to honestly reflect on the Five Cornerstones of Collective Insight (and
the Seven Pillars on an individual level, for that matter).
So whether you are leading hundreds of employees or a handful of kids, the
actions to model self-awareness are the same. First, you have to go all-in and
make a total commitment to your team’s self-awareness, starting with your own.
As Mulally explains, “My role is to ensure awareness for everybody. To watch all
the time—watch myself, watch others, watch the organization.” Equally
important is to know and communicate your credo—that is, the values that define
the behaviors you expect from yourself and your team. At Ford, Mulally’s credo
—something he calls his Working Together Principles and Practices
*2—didn’t just
help his team understand him, it drew a line in the sand for what he expected of
them. It’s not enough just to ask for feedback and encourage your team to bring
up problems; you need to listen—really listen—to what they have to say. When I
asked Doug Suttles, who is now the CEO of oil and gas company Encana, the
secret to a successful team, he replied:
A lot of people use the word “trust”—I’m not big on that because it’s
too emotive for us engineers, and the meaning is set too wide. What
really matters is: Do they have confidence in you? Not just that
you’ll point the ship in the right direction, but do they believe you’ll
listen? Do they believe you want an open and transparent
environment where successes and failures are talked about? When
the team is challenged, are you baiting them or actually giving them
support and help?
Remember, as we’ve seen throughout this book, most leaders are fighting an
uphill battle when it comes to their own self-awareness. And since unsolicited
critical feedback rarely flows freely, leaders who want to change often have to
take rather direct measures. Unfortunately, this creates a bit of a catch-22: If
employees are reluctant to provide their opinions to begin with, won’t they feel
even more stressed when you ask them for it point-blank? Can leaders really
overcome the MUM effect and elicit raw, candid feedback from those they lead?
Fortunately, there is a way: something I call the Leader Feedback Process.
Modeling the Way: The Leader Feedback Process
A few years ago, I was approached by Jamie, the president of a hospitality and
property-management company. As only the third president in its 40-year history,
he’d been brought on a year prior to break the inertia that was starting to threaten
the organization’s very survival. His long career had given him a wide range of
experience, but this was his first time in the top job.
Jamie had set the audacious goal of doubling the size of the company in the
next five years, and in order to succeed, he would need to instill a sense of
urgency and insist on excellence in every area of the organization. For this to
happen, his executives had to feel safe voicing problems, confronting the brutal
truth, and having tough conversations with one another about each of the Five
Cornerstones—their objectives, progress, individual contributions, and so on.
On the surface, Jamie’s executive team had all the right ingredients. They were
committed to his vision. They were aligned on how they would achieve it. They
were generally comfortable working together. But since Jamie arrived, there had
been obvious posturing, and he never felt like he was hearing the complete truth.
When I interviewed each member of his team, their responses confirmed those
suspicions. They believed he was the right person for the job, but many were
struggling to trust and connect with him.
Jamie and I agreed that we needed to address these issues directly—to rip off
the Band-Aid, so to speak—and provide a forum for a confidential but candid
discussion. We decided to devote two days to an off-site retreat that would begin
with an exercise that has become a gold standard in my consulting work. Jamie
would later tell me that it gave him some of the most powerful feedback he’s ever
received.
The process was famously pioneered in the early 1970s at General Electric and
has been described as “a super-intensive getting-to-know-you meeting [where]
team members raise candid observations and questions” about their leader.
Though it was originally developed to help new managers and their teams get to
know one another, the so-called “New Leader Assimilation Exercise” has been
shown to be valuable regardless of a leader’s tenure—that’s why I call it the
Leader Feedback Process. It helps managers earn nearly instantaneous insight
into their team’s perceptions and expectations of them while improving their
leadership, communication, and well-being. What’s more, empirically, their teams
experience better, more trusting relationships and a greater sense of commitment
to their mission.
So on a stifling summer day a few months after our first meeting, Jamie, his
team, and I gathered in a mercifully air-conditioned meeting room at a local
country club. “Thank you all for making the time to be here,” Jamie began. “We
have one goal: to become a better team. And I’m up first. Over the next three
hours, you’ll have the chance to give me feedback about my first year on the job.
The ground rules are simple. No comment is out of bounds and everyone
participates. Can we all agree to that?”
He paused, surveying their reactions. A few people hesitantly nodded, but there
was a palpable sense of uneasiness. Attempting to allay their fears, he added, “To
help you be comfortable being completely candid, I’m going to leave the room
and have Tasha lead the discussion. I’ve asked that under no circumstances should
she tell me who said what. Does that sound like it would work?” The fear now
significantly abated, they responded with a chorus of surprisingly eager yesses.
After I (gently) kicked Jamie out of the conference room, I stood up and
gestured toward seven flip-charts covering one long wall. On the top of each sheet
was a question written in blue marker:
1. What do we know about Jamie?
2. What do we want to know about Jamie?
3. What should Jamie know about us as a team?
4. What concerns do we have about Jamie?
5. What expectations do we have of Jamie?
6. What do we want Jamie to stop doing, start doing, and continue doing?
7. What feedback do we have about our vision, our strategy, and our plan?
“This part of the discussion will last about forty-five minutes,” I told them.
“And we’ll answer each question in order. Your job is to give me as many ideas as
you possibly can, and my job is to write down everything you say.” Positioning
myself in front of the first flip-chart, I removed the cap of a large black marker.
“Let’s start by discussing what we know about Jamie.” Three answers came
instantly: “We know he has been working in the industry for twenty-five years.”
“We know that he has insanely high expectations.” “We know that he must be
really brave, because he’s doing this exercise!”
And just like that, we were off and running. The comments were flowing so
freely that I started to write smaller just to fit all of their replies on the giant sheet
of paper. We moved to the second question, and the third, and so on. Forty-five
minutes later, all seven flip-charts were covered with their comments.
I gave the team a 10-minute break and went to find Jamie. As we walked back
to the room, I asked him, “Are you ready?” He grinned confidently. “Ready as I’ll
ever be!” But when we approached the wall of flip-charts, his grin faltered and
his eyes grew wide. I gave him a few minutes to read his team’s answers and
helped clarify the meaning of a few comments. Before I fetched the team, I
reminded Jamie how important it was to remain calm and non-defensive in the
next part of our discussion.
Soon everyone was assembled around the conference table. But before we dove
into the feedback, I asked Jamie to spend a few minutes giving his team some
background on his life: favorite things to do growing up, number of brothers and
sisters, funniest childhood memories, most important values—I’ve found that in
the right context, sharing such information has a near-immediate impact on the
team’s level of trust even if they’ve known the leader for many years.
Next, Jamie responded to their feedback one question at a time. For some
comments, a simple acknowledgment was sufficient (“Yes, I do have insanely
high expectations.” “I am glad you think we’re headed in the right direction even
if this first year hasn’t been easy.”). Others required more discussion, and in some
cases, a commitment on his part to try a different approach. For example, many
members of the team were frustrated that Jamie would sometimes go around
them and approach their staff directly. Exploring that feedback helped him
understand that this was embarrassing for his executives and confusing for their
employees.
During the course of our 90-minute discussion—which Jamie started to refer
to as his “proctology exam”—his insight into how the team was perceiving his
behavior grew exponentially, as did their understanding of his expectations. And
when Jamie and I sat down a month or so later, he told me that he was absolutely
awestruck at the improvements he had seen—both in his own effectiveness and
the overall functioning of the team. The retreat, he said, had accelerated their
trust. They were talking more openly about real, substantive issues. And though
some had occasionally slipped into their old habits, they were more engaged and
collaborative than they had ever been. Not coincidentally, less than one year later,
the company’s revenue had jumped more than 20 percent.
Jamie and his team had certainly reached an important milestone in their
journey toward collective self-awareness. In showing them that he was truly open
to hearing the truth about himself, they felt safer sharing it even without being
directly asked. But to create a truly self-aware team, this is only the first step.
Even once leaders have opened up these channels, they must also work to ensure
that they stay open, and not just between employees and the leader but among
members of the team.
Building Block #2: The Safety (and Expectation) to Tell the Truth
In 1996, doctoral candidate Amy Edmondson began what has since become a
landmark study on the science of team self-awareness. Edmondson, now a
professor at Harvard, wanted to better understand the reasons for medical errors
among hospital-care teams; a pressing issue given that the average hospital patient
is exposed to between 480 and 960 potential errors, which kill hundreds and
injure more than a million people each year in the United States alone.
Edmondson followed eight hospital-unit teams in two urban teaching hospitals
over the course of six months. At first, she was puzzled to find that teams with
better unit performance (quality of care, collaboration, efficiency, leadership,
etc.) reported more errors. But as she examined the data further, she discovered
the reason for these surprising findings.
The poorer-performing units weren’t making fewer medication errors—they
just weren’t reporting the ones they’d made. The reason? These nurses, quite
simply, were terrified to do so, telling Edmonson that those who did got “put on
trial” and “blamed for mistakes.” (When I worked in a hospital, I personally
experienced the challenges of raising an issue that might negatively impact a
closely watched metric.) In contrast, in the highest-performing units in
Edmondson’s study—that is, those with the most reported errors—the nurses
were comfortable openly discussing mistakes. On these teams, they weren’t afraid
to tell the nurse manager that something had gone wrong.
Edmondson coined the term psychological safety to describe the shared belief
that it’s safe to ask one another for help, admit mistakes, and raise tough issues.
“The term,” Edmondson explains, “is meant to suggest neither a careless sense of
permissiveness, nor an unrelenting positive affect but rather a sense of
confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for
speaking up.” Though somewhat counterintuitive, her comment about
“unrelenting positive affect” is particularly important: in highly cohesive teams,
members might be less likely to challenge one another, often because of a
misguided desire to maintain group harmony. But as “good” as this might feel, it’s
detrimental to the team’s self-awareness and therefore to its success.
Google’s People Operations Department reached a similar conclusion after a
five-year research program examining what it took to build the perfect team.
Early on, after the team of organizational psychologists, engineers, sociologists,
and statisticians had reviewed thousands of studies on what made teams
successful, they couldn’t isolate any specific patterns. So they tried a different
approach, studying hundreds of Google teams on factors like personality,
background, and work style. Still no answers. It seemed that the team makeup—
the “who”—didn’t matter, whether they were introverts or extroverts, subject
experts or polymaths, worker bees or queen bees, or any combination of the
above.
Interestingly, the Google team reached a breakthrough only once they began to
examine the “how”—or the unwritten rules that governed the way a team worked.
Their findings were consistent with what Edmondson had discovered in her
hospital study 15 years earlier: psychologically safe teams consistently
outperformed those that aren’t.
But how does psychological safety relate to team self-awareness? A few years
after her study with hospital teams, Edmondson began another investigation—this
time, with a company that manufactured office furniture—extensively studying
more than 50 teams via interviews, surveys, and direct observation (i.e., she
essentially followed people around with a clipboard, which is also one of my
favorite pastimes). Again, when team members felt psychologically safe, they
were more comfortable raising issues, more likely to deal with reality, and more
likely to speak the truth. They were also infinitely more successful. In fact, the
precise reason that psychologically safe teams performed better was specifically
because of their higher levels of self-awareness.
It’s worth noting that for high-profile companies, a psychologically safe culture
isn’t just good for morale and productivity, but also for the company’s public
image. According to Ed Catmull, because Pixar’s executives tell employees the
truth, they naturally appreciate the importance of confidentiality. As a result,
Pixar has never had a single leak to the press—not even during the dramatic due
diligence period when they were being acquired by Disney. Even when Catmull,
John Lasseter, and Steve Jobs announced the deal to employees, not one spoke to
reporters camped outside their headquarters.
Let’s look at an example of how leaders can create the safety—and the
expectation—for telling each other the truth. As a new day was about to dawn
during an especially stressful week, Levi King (the entrepreneur we met in the
last chapter) was clearing out his inbox before attempting to catch a few futile
hours of sleep. The last e-mail he sent before his head hit the pillow was an
exasperated rant to his business partner about an issue that had been bugging him
at their company, Nav. But the second he sent it, he knew it had been a mistake.
The tone was unnecessarily rude—borderline hostile, even. Levi knew he had
really messed up when his normally lightning-quick-to-respond partner waited a
full 24 hours to reply. The response was measured but direct, pointing out Levi’s
incendiary language and politely asking whether he really felt that way.
First thing that next morning, Levi found his partner. “I am so sorry,” he said,
“I don’t know what I was thinking. It was late. I was tired. I was an asshole.”
Thankfully, his partner accepted his apology, but instead of patting himself on the
back and moving on, Levi was self-aware enough to see the larger opportunity in
his gaffe. During the company’s next monthly meeting, Levi hooked up his
computer to the conference room projector and pulled up the offending e-mail.
He watched his employees’ eyes grow wider with disbelief as they scanned his
message. “Is anyone proud of this?” Levi asked. They shook their heads. “Okay,
then. Let’s talk about what I did wrong here.” They then engaged in a frank postmortem to deconstruct exactly why the e-mail had been rude and agree on what
Levi could have done differently. And though the conversation was certainly
uncomfortable, he pushed through it because of the learning opportunity it
provided to his team.
It should come as no surprise that the first step for leaders wanting to cultivate
psychological safety in their team is to work on building trust. But though it’s
important, trust alone isn’t sufficient for psychological safety. More than
merely trusting that team members have one another’s best interests at heart,
psychologically safe teams go a step further to show each other respect,
sensitivity, and caring. And to do this, they have to see one another as real human
beings with weaknesses and flaws. In fact, Google’s research program found that
the single most powerful contributor to psychological safety was vulnerability, or
a willingness to openly admit our failings. And it has to start at the top. “Many
leaders,” says Levi King, “say ‘Yes it’s safe [to be vulnerable,]’ but they’re not
willing to go there themselves. I can’t just talk about this figuratively. I have to
show that at our company, it’s okay to make mistakes—because we forgive each
other and assume positive intent.”
To be sure, as research professor and author Brené Brown demonstrates in her
book Daring Greatly, doing so can often feel scary and even wrong, especially for
people in positions of power. I once worked with a successful executive who saw
vulnerability as a weakness earlier in his career. “If I even hinted,” he told me,
“that I had made a mistake, I thought my team would lose respect for me.” But as
time went on, he realized that the truth was actually the exact opposite. As Doug
Suttles observes, “I’ve learned over time that being a bit vulnerable deepens
people’s respect for you, particularly when you’re willing to acknowledge it. They
walk away and say ‘Holy smokes! I’m going to screw up someday. But maybe it’s
okay and it’s a good idea to talk about it openly.’ ”
In addition to modeling vulnerability, leaders can foster psychologically safer
teams by working together to create clear norms. Years ago, I was asked to help a
leadership team that oversaw women and children’s services at a preeminent
hospital with their strategic planning process. Their newly promoted director,
Tracee, along with her four nurse managers, had been tasked with keeping the
department competitive. Because the facility was recognized as the city’s “baby
hospital,” many people, including countless celebrities, traveled from all around
the country to deliver there. But in recent years, local competitors had stepped up
their game, offering then-unheard-of amenities like luxury suites, personal chefs,
and sparkling new facilities. Tracee’s team had to keep up, not just by ensuring
compassionate and world-class medical care, but by offering the kind of topnotch service found in a five-star hotel.
While some managers might have simply thrown money at the problem—say,
by upgrading the accommodations or trying to one-up the competition on
amenities—Tracee and her team took things a step further. Understanding the
direct link between their willingness to tell one another the truth and achieving
their aggressive goals, they decided to focus on making their department a safer,
more supportive place for their nurses and techs to work.
So before we even dove into business planning, our first step was to have a
frank discussion about how Tracee’s team was functioning (i.e., the cornerstone
of processes). They admitted that while they usually worked well together, there
was sometimes an undercurrent of tension that no one was willing to call out. For
that reason, I suggested that we create a set of team norms. “The objective,” I told
them, “is to agree on your rules of engagement as a team. What behaviors will
help you achieve your strategy? What kind of environment do you want to create?
What do you need to do to make this a safe and supportive team?” To define
these behaviors, we used the Start/Stop/Continue Model that we learned about in
chapter 7 (while I don’t think this model is particularly effective at the individual
level, it can give teams a common framework to discuss what’s working and what
isn’t).
Tracee’s team’s final list of norms looked something like this:
• No gossip: open, honest, safe communication.
• Always go to the person: have difficult conversations with each other in
the spirit of support.
• Business is business: have crucial conversations and still be on good
terms.
• Assume the best: support each other in front of staff, patients, and
physicians.
• Practice forgiveness: we’re human. We make mistakes. Address it and
move forward.
To ensure that their norms became a living, breathing document rather than
something they stuffed in a drawer and forgot, they plastered their offices and
meeting agendas with them so they stayed top-of-mind. When the team members
demonstrated the principles, they commended one another; when they didn’t, they
called one another out. Eventually, they took their norms to their own teams, and
in turn started to hold the entire department accountable. The increase in
performance was undeniable: employee engagement jumped from 71 percent to
86 percent in less than a year; they were among the top 10 performing hospitals
out of 163 national facilities; and they even managed to grow their service line in
a shrinking market. As Tracee and her team discovered, the time and energy they
invested in creating a few simple norms to support psychological safety among
their leadership team had paid off in spades.
Building Block #3: An Ongoing Commitment and Process to Stay SelfAware
As the bright afternoon sun streamed in through the window, I surveyed the
cluttered, colorful office I’d just entered. To my right was a long, neat desk with a
huge Apple computer monitor as its centerpiece. To my left, a wall of bookcases
crammed with action figures, family photos, awards, and other tchotchkes,
including the cast of a hand that has become world-famous in the computer
animation community. Just minutes before, I had stepped onto the 22-acre
campus in Emeryville, California, traversed a long, shady walkway, and entered
the atrium of the Steve Jobs Building. Flanking the front desk were life-sized
versions of Monsters, Inc. characters Sulley and Mike on one end and a giant
sculpture of Toy Story’s Woody and Buzz on the other. On the back wall was a
giant print of Scottish princess Merida from Brave riding through the forest on
her noble steed.
It was a Thursday afternoon at Pixar headquarters, and I was sitting in the
office of its brilliant president, Ed Catmull. Like many people, I had adored his
2014 book, Creativity Inc. But because I am a self-awareness researcher, there
were a few elements of it that had piqued my interest so much that I simply had
to talk to him. Among other things, I wanted to learn more about Pixar’s nowinfamous “Notes Day,” which Catmull chronicled in the last chapter of his book.
The year was 2013, and despite a series of record-breaking box-office hits,
Pixar was experiencing a frustrating sense of inertia. On top of surging
production costs, Catmull and his team had noticed a subtle but worrisome trend,
especially for Catmull, for whom a core tenet is what he calls “leading by being
self-aware.” In recent years, as the company had grown, the culture had also
changed. Instead of sustaining the “unhindered communication” that made them
so successful, employees seemed to be censoring themselves more and more.
Catmull wanted to know why people were so hesitant to speak the truth and,
equally importantly, what to do about it.
Clearly, it wasn’t enough just to encourage feedback: they needed a dedicated
process to generate it. So on March 11, Pixar closed to hold a “day of honesty,”
which they called “Notes Day.” In the weeks leading up to Notes Day, Pixar
executives posed a question to employees: “The year is 2017. Both of this year’s
films were completed well under budget. What innovations helped these
productions meet their budget goals? What are some of the specific things we did
differently?” They received more than 4,000 responses about more than 1,000
unique topics, ranging from reducing the amount of time required to make each
film, to developing a better workplace, to reducing implicit gender bias in their
films. The executives had chosen a few more than 100 of those topics for
employees to tackle in 171 separate sessions spread out across the three buildings
of their campus. Employees chose which sessions to attend, and all were led by a
trained internal facilitator. Each one concluded with a series of “Exit Forms”—
red for specific proposals, blue for brainstorms, and yellow for best practices, as
well as assignments of “idea advocates” who would help advance suggestions that
came out of the conversations.
Pixar co-founder and chief creative officer John Lasseter kicked off the day
by reminding everyone how important candor was to their success. He
underscored how difficult it was to give and receive tough feedback, but
implored everyone to do their best to be honest anyway. “This is going to feel like
it’s directed at you personally…” he said, “but put your tough skin on, and for the
sake of Pixar, speak up and don’t stop the honesty.”
In the months following Notes Day, Catmull received many e-mails from
employees applauding its concept and execution. The experiment seemed to have,
as Catmull put it, “broke[n] the logjam that was getting in the way of candor” and
“made it safer for people to say what they thought.” It also served as a reminder
for everyone that “collaboration, determination and candor never fail to lift us
up.”
But now that a few years had gone by, I wanted the final verdict. Had this
exercise just been a one-off success, or had it truly had an ongoing impact on
their culture? Were leaders still hearing the truth from their employees? Were
employees actually more comfortable giving and receiving candid feedback?
With these questions swirling around in my head, as if on cue, Catmull
appeared in the doorway. Dressed in a black short-sleeved button-down shirt and
jeans (and, naturally, sporting an Apple watch), he hobbled over to the chair
across from mine. Gesturing to the cast on his right foot, he quipped, “I got drunk
in a biker bar and did a roundhouse kick.” I chuckled, sensing that that probably
wasn’t how he’d actually gotten the injury.
As our conversation progressed, I was struck by Catmull’s depth of thought. He
was focused and professorial, eschewing simplistic or neat explanations at every
turn. This was especially true when I asked him about what had happened after
Notes Day. He sat back in his chair and adjusted his glasses. I smiled, expecting
him to regale me with tales of how Notes Day had solved all of their candor
problems and now everyone was telling the truth about everything.
But Catmull chose a slightly different path. “It was definitely a valuable
exercise,” he stated. “But a few big things slipped through the cracks.” He
explained that a few months after Notes Day, they were having a “major
meltdown” with one of their films. Both their traditional channels and their back
channels for feedback to leaders had failed, to the point where the film was in
danger of not even being made.
Catmull paused as I connected the dots. “So these issues were there on Notes
Day?” I asked, furrowing my brow. Catmull nodded. “And everyone knew they
were there?” He again nodded. Flabbergasted, I asked, “And no one said anything
about them on the day of honesty?” Catmull nodded a third time, looking at me
with an expression that said bingo.
He went on, “We realized that we had a deeper issue that we needed to figure
out. Notes Day originated from a very successful process we’d developed with
our Braintrust, which is a group of our directors and best story people. That group
had done a great job of making their meetings safe for notes and criticisms. We
had been trying to model this style of safety for the whole company.”
However, he told me, there were two problems. The first was that not every
manager had the skills to solicit ongoing feedback. “People take their cues from
what they see and observe,” he said, “not from what we say.” No matter how
often the executives assured everyone that this was a safe organization for
criticism, if their team didn’t feel safe, they would be cautious about what they
said.
The second problem, as Catmull described it, was that notes are well-intended
criticisms, but they are not solutions. “Solutions,” he said, “require a great deal of
effort, both in understanding them, and then working out how to act on them.” At
the end of Notes Day, they had thousands of “notes” but still needed to sort
through the information, find patterns, set priorities, and then develop solutions.
But the biggest shock of all was that a few big problems still went completely
unmentioned. Catmull is convinced that no one brought them up because they
assumed someone else would. And since the leaders didn’t know about these
problems, they hadn’t created the right opportunity to discuss them. “It’s hard to
make a safe venue for a problem that we didn’t even know existed,” he noted. In
other words, they didn’t have the right data to be questioning their assumptions
about how the company was functioning (i.e., assumptions being one of the
trickiest of the Five Cornerstones).
Clearly, if the Pixar executives wanted to further open the floodgates of
feedback, an ongoing process was needed—though it would take some
adjustment to reap real rewards. Two employees, one technical and one artistic,
proposed a system: if people didn’t feel comfortable talking to their manager
about something that wasn’t working, they could approach a designated Peer
Pirate for help. Catmull explained that “in the days of real pirates, the crew
would elect one of their peers to take issues and complaints to the captain with
the agreement that he wouldn’t be killed for what he said.”
Pixar implemented Peer Pirates as a back channel to reveal the kinds of
problems that were still going unmentioned. But after eight months, it still wasn’t
yielding valuable information. That’s when Jim Morris—Pixar’s general manager
at the time, and now the president of Pixar—suggested that each Peer Pirate
select four to six colleagues from their departments who could communicate
feedback to Catmull and Morris together. Each department assembled a group
that was diverse, comfortable with each other, and therefore more likely to be
comfortable with Catmull and Morris.
With this, they were onto something. The Peer Pirates took their presentations
very seriously, and many issues that had gone unmentioned on Notes Day were
brought to the surface. “Now we had a mechanism for finding deeper insights and
patterns within and across departments,” Catmull said, beaming. “Now we had
gold.” These insights set in motion a few significant organizational changes that
are now bearing fruit.
But Catmull is quick to point out that the process wasn’t a silver bullet, either.
Some issues have been easy to fix, others took a lot of work, and others they’re
still wrestling with. “It would be a grave mistake for us, or people on the outside,
to somehow think that we’ve got it figured out,” he said. Yet the great value of the
Peer Pirates was that they uncovered a few systemic problems that were getting in
the way of ongoing honesty. And by addressing the underlying reasons for why
employees weren’t telling the truth, they helped their already smart and talented
managers create a culture where they could.
Pixar’s approach is just one example of how leaders can instill an ongoing
process and therefore a culture of awareness. Let’s look at another slightly more
extreme case. In 1975, 26-year-old Harvard graduate Ray Dalio founded
Bridgewater Associates in his New York City apartment. The company would go
on to become the world’s largest hedge fund, and Dalio credits their success to the
principles of “radical truth” and “radical transparency.”
*3
At Bridgewater, employees are encouraged to call out unproductive behavior,
and criticizing others behind their backs is a fireable offense. All conversations,
unless they are personal or proprietary, are tape-recorded and accessible to
anyone in the company. Bridgewater has even invested in technology to support
the free flow of feedback. Using company-issued iPads, employees publicly
record problems and failures in an “issues log.” Each person, including Dalio, also
has a “digital baseball card” where they score each other on behaviors like
creativity and reliability on a scale of 1 to 10—the average of which is then
displayed on the card for all to see. Through another app, employees give one
another “dots”—“good dots” are awarded for behaviors that support the team, and
“bad dots” help employees understand how they might be hurting it. Of such
processes, co-chief investment officer Bob Prince observes, “What we’re trying
to do here is to pursue the truth at all costs.”
But what are the costs? And are Bridgewater’s extreme practices something
that other companies should emulate? Their financial results are certainly
impressive—they’ve returned more money than any other hedge fund in history.
And indeed, many employees say they love working there so much that they can’t
imagine being anywhere else. But other insiders believe that the company is
successful not because of this “constant drumbeat of criticism,” but in spite of it.
One former employee explained, “What you see at Bridgewater [is] people
practicing armchair psychology. You have a bunch of 23- and 24-year-olds
running around supposedly diagnosing problems that I wouldn’t trust someone
with a PhD in psychology to do.” It is perhaps for this reason that a shocking 30
percent of new hires leave—either voluntarily or involuntarily—within two years
of being hired.
So is Dalio a brilliant visionary or an Orwellian autocrat? It depends on whom
you ask. Though I certainly don’t disagree with his unflinching commitment to
the truth, my view is that Bridgewater’s methods may be unnecessarily costly, and
that most teams can achieve a feedback-rich environment without such extreme
measures. Let’s look at one way to do that: the Candor Challenge, a process I
have refined over many years to instill ongoing self-awareness in teams.
*4
The Commitment to Ongoing Team Self-Awareness in Action: The Candor
Challenge
“We’re…we’re going to do what?” asked one indignant vice president.
“With respect, I honestly don’t see why this is necessary,” said another.
“Business is booming. Our year-over-year growth is busting all projections.”
“I agree,” said Sarah, the VP of finance. “We all respect your work, Tasha,
believe me. The morning session was great. But you must understand, we’re
already the most self-aware team I know. We have a clear direction as a
company. John’s a fabulous president and does a great job modeling the way for
us. Everybody knows they can speak up without getting in trouble. Honestly? We
like each other. We trust each other. We hang out together. So, thank you, Tasha,
but I really don’t think we need to spend three hours exchanging feedback.”
In all my years as an organizational psychologist, I’d never experienced such a
brilliant and well-informed pushback. These executives not only knew exactly
what to say; they were right—mostly. Theirs was a successful company that
already had most of the building blocks of self-awareness in place. But, perhaps
ironically, their success had created a new problem. When things are going well,
people are more apt to ignore the reality of potential issues, suppress difficult
conversations, and put up with bad behavior. In recent months, John had noticed
an increased prevalence of turf wars—his team members had hunkered down in
their departments, seemingly popping up only to squabble about minor cross-
functional issues, and sometimes bringing in John himself to arbitrate.
“They’re bickering like siblings!” he moaned.
“I’ve seen this so many times,” I told him. “It’s far easier for the VP of sales
and the VP of marketing to lock horns in a budget battle than talk about the
deeper, subtler issues getting in the way of their working together.” We needed to
figure out what those issues were.
Back to the retreat, and the team’s well-intentioned pushback. “Okay,” I said to
Sarah, “I definitely hear you.” I took a deep breath, knowing that what I said next
would either make or break the rest of the afternoon. “Let me ask a question.
How many of you are nervous?” Every hand shot up.
“Nervousness is understandable and totally normal,” I said. “But the level of
fear in the room suggests to me that something’s still stopping you from being
truly open with one another. Maybe some of you are afraid to rock the boat when
the waters are so calm. Maybe some of you prefer to avoid conflict or are just
keeping quiet because everyone else is. Could it be, I wonder, that you guys are
missing the final building block? Have you truly made an ongoing commitment to
staying self-aware as a team?” Before anyone had the chance to respond, I
continued, “It would be unfair for me to tell you this will be easy, but I can
promise two things. First, the process works. And second, this will be one of the
most important conversations you’ve ever had.” Nine sets of eyes stared back at
me, each as wide as saucers.
I’d made my promises. Now all I had to do was keep them.
Working in my favor was the fact that we’d already had a great start. This was
the afternoon of a one-day retreat that John and I had designed to look at how the
organization was functioning and lay the foundation for the open exchange of
feedback on an ongoing basis. The morning had been devoted to briefly verifying
their strategic direction, creating team norms, and, most importantly,
participating in a Leader Feedback Process for John. This exercise had gone quite
well, with John discovering a few strengths and weaknesses he’d never known he
had. As we just saw, seeing him model the process of receiving feedback was an
important prerequisite for his team to feel more comfortable giving feedback to
each other—which was what we were about to spend the next three hours doing.
The Candor Challenge takes place over a period of months or years, but most
notably begins with a Team Feedback Exchange, in which every team member
gets the chance to give their peers feedback on their strengths, their weaknesses,
and what they can do to increase their contribution to the team’s success. And if
that isn’t intimidating enough, each team member delivers that feedback in front
of the entire team. To lead the exercise, leaders can enlist an outside facilitator
(in John’s case, it was me) who has expertise in group dynamics, like an
organizational psychologist or HR professional. Alternatively, they can appoint a
team member to facilitate the process. Beyond the essential requirement that this
person be both trusted and socially savvy, he or she should also be neither the
team’s most senior nor its most junior member. (And as a general rule, the larger
the team, the more helpful it is to engage a skilled facilitator; with groups larger
than five or six, this is absolutely invaluable to ensure an efficient and effective
process.)
John’s team had been warned that the Team Feedback Exchange was coming.
Three weeks ago, he’d asked them to start thinking about each of their colleagues’
contributions—what they were doing that was helping the team, what could they
be doing differently, and what they personally needed from each person to be
successful. Now it was time for them to speak up. I stood up and walked over to a
flip-chart where I’d outlined the process. It looked like this:
Process (20 minutes per person)
• Prepare feedback
• Deliver question 1 feedback (30 seconds per question)
• Deliver questions 2 and 3 feedback (30 seconds per question)
• Questions for clarification
Then I explained how it would work: each person would give feedback to each
other person at the table by answering three questions—and everyone would have
the chance to ask for clarification on the feedback they’d been given at the end of
their turn. The nine participants would be randomly assigned to one of three
groups, and the exercise would progress in rounds, with short breaks in between.
At the end, we would take some time to process and debrief.
After confirming that the executives in the first group felt comfortable kicking
things off, I turned to another page of the flip-chart where I’d written the three
questions they would be answering about their colleagues.
1. What, behaviorally, does this person do that most contributes to our
success?
2. If this person could change one behavior to be more successful, what would
it be?
3. What behavior do I need from this person to help me be more successful?
“Okay,” I said. “Now it’s time. You have a few minutes to prepare your
feedback for the first group. Remember, though, that the purpose isn’t to tell your
teammates everything you think about them—we’re looking for one piece of
feedback for each question, a thirty-second response or less.”
I stressed that their feedback should focus on behaviors rather than
generalities. “By behavioral feedback, I mean focusing on specific examples of
what they said, how they said it, or what they did rather than generalities or
interpretations,” I said. “For example, telling someone, ‘You’re being aggressive,’
is not behavioral; it’s an interpretation of their behavior. Alternatively, if I said,
‘During our last team meeting, you interrupted me three times and raised your
voice each time,’ that is about behavior. Focusing on what people are doing rather
than our interpretations or judgments not only helps us better understand the
feedback, it helps you hear it openly and non-defensively.”
Just as I thought they were finally getting with the program, Sarah once again
raised her hand with the enthusiasm of a straight-A student. “I understand what
you’re saying,” she said, “but this all seems a little bit over-the-top. Is there a
reason that we have to give each other our feedback verbally? Can’t we just write
it down and give it anonymously?”
Her colleagues began nodding and hmm-hmm’ing around the table. “I’ll give
you three reasons why it’s always better to give it verbally, Sarah,” I said. “First,
the richness and detail you get in a conversation is unmatched by written
feedback. Second, believe it or not, anonymous feedback can often be more
hurtful. When people’s comments can’t be traced back to them, they’re not as
careful with how they word things. And third, delivering feedback out loud offers
the opportunity to practice this habit in a safe, controlled environment, which
makes you more likely to continue it in the future.”
Sensing their continuing disquiet, I gave them the ground rules that would
ensure that everyone stayed honest, open, and respectful of one another
throughout the process. They were:
Getting feedback ground rules
*5
:
1. No pushback or defensiveness: be curious and remember that perception is
reality.
2. Take notes and ask questions only for clarification.
3. Be open-minded and assume good intentions.
4. Thank your team members. Giving feedback isn’t easy!
Giving feedback ground rules:
1. Avoid generalities (“you always” or “you never”).
2. Focus on the behavior rather than the person.
3. Don’t give your interpretations of others’ behavior—just the behavior itself.
4. Provide examples.
With that, it was finally time to get started. I gave them a few minutes for
everyone to prepare their answers for group 1: first up would be an executive
named Doug. We went around the table, with each person sharing their answers
to question 1, then 2 and 3.
*6 Doug wisely took notes to capture the feedback,
and when everyone was finished, they looked at him expectantly. He smiled,
thanked them, and asked a few clarifying questions. And because he appeared to
have made it through unscathed, they all seemed a little more at ease. The team
was now getting into a rhythm. We moved to the rest of group 1, and after a
quick break, we continued with groups 2 and 3.
When we finished, they broke into a loud, exhausted round of applause at what
they’d just accomplished. The team had followed the ground rules perfectly and,
in my eyes at least, unearthed some incredibly powerful issues. And just as
important, I could tell that each one of them had managed to hear and absorb the
feedback without defensiveness, denial, or hysterics. Were there some tears? Sure
—there often are. Interestingly, though, after years of using this exercise, I’ve
seen just as many shed during the positive feedback as I do with the constructive
feedback.
Our three hours almost up, I issued a challenge. “To close out the exercise,
we’re going to go around the table. I’d like each person to make one commitment
based on the feedback they just heard.”
“I’m going to play devil’s advocate and share the voice of the customer more
often,” said one executive.
“I’m going make more time to meet with each of you instead of charging ahead
without your input,” said another.
“I guess I’d better stop harping on what’s wrong and be solutions-oriented,” said
a third.
It had been a long afternoon. All that was left was to agree on the plan to keep
the process going—something I call Accountability Conversations. The team
decided to circle back monthly and devote 30 or so minutes to a discussion: each
person would provide an update on what they were doing to make good on their
commitment. Then, they’d ask the team for their feedback, support, or anything
else that would help them stay on the path toward improvement. But
Accountability Conversations, the team astutely realized, weren’t an excuse to sit
on feedback for days or weeks. So they also agreed to point out, in real time,
when they saw behavior that either supported or contradicted each team
member’s commitment.
Before bidding John and his team farewell, I gave them a crucial reminder.
“Now that this feedback-rich culture has hopefully started to take hold, try to
resist the temptation to think your work is done,” I told them. “Your work is not
done. In fact, this is only the beginning. Staying on top of the truth requires an
ongoing commitment.” This is why I recommend that at a minimum, all teams
should hold a Feedback Exchange at least once per year—after all, there are
always new behaviors, new challenges, and new team members, and keeping the
feedback flowing is crucial to addressing new issues as they crop up.
With that, John’s team filed out, exhausted, exhilarated, and, yes, deeply
relieved. But did I live up to my promise of giving them one of the most
important conversations they’d ever had? A few months later, I found out. If the
Feedback Exchange was successful, the progress they made after it was equally
hard-earned and equally extraordinary. Like any team comprised of mere
mortals, they had a few slips into old behaviors here and there, but the difference
was that they were now brave and committed enough to call each other out. When
I asked John what the net effect of all of this was, he said, “As a team, we’re
getting more done in the same amount of time. We’re surfacing critical business
issues and fixing them before they get out of hand. And what amazes me most is
that the silos are basically gone—we’re working together as one team.”
And while the Candor Challenge is designed primarily for the work setting, all
teams can use it to cultivate and sustain a culture of self-awareness—whether
they’re executives running a business, families trying to get along, or volunteer
groups working to change the world. (Accordingly, if you would like to
implement this process in your own team, you can download a workbook to help
you do it at www.insight-book.com.) Indeed, no matter what your goals are, the
commitment to the process of getting and staying self-aware can be the
difference between failure and energizing, spectacular success. The good news is
that candor creates a virtuous cycle: the more honest you are with one another,
the easier it becomes to be honest in the future. Of course, it takes work and
courage to get there, but the results are well worth it. You’ll deepen your
relationships, foster real collaboration, and dramatically improve your progress
toward fulfilling your mission.
FROM SELF-AWARE TEAMS TO SELF-AWARE ORGANIZATIONS
In 1888, while visiting his mother at his childhood home, 34-year-old George
Eastman was tinkering with an anagram set, trying to conjure a name for his new
company. He wanted something short, unique, and easy to pronounce. Eastman
loved the word they finally invented—especially the first letter, K, which he saw
as “strong [and] incisive.”
Later that year, he leased the third floor of a building at 343 State Street in his
hometown of Rochester, New York, and an American icon was born. Eastman’s
business model was almost immediately profitable, in part because his relatively
inexpensive cameras required customers to repeatedly purchase high-margin
items like film, chemicals, and paper. For nearly a century, Kodak thrived,
gobbling up 90 percent of the film market. By the late 1970s, they made 85
percent of cameras sold in the United States. And the brand wasn’t just profitable
—it seemed to capture the ethos of the American Dream. As just two examples,
Neil Armstrong famously took a roll of Ektachrome film to the moon, and Paul
Simon paid tribute to Kodachrome, the company’s 35mm film, in a song of the
same name.
But Kodak’s failure to grasp the changing realities of its consumer base—
specifically, the birth of digital photography and the subsequent death of film—
would be the company’s undoing. In 1975, when Kodak electrical engineer Steven
Sasson assembled a prototype of the first digital camera, management scrapped it
because they believed the product would hurt their film business. In a textbook
example of delusion, Sasson described the managers’ reaction as something akin
to, “That’s cute—but don’t tell anyone about it.”
In the late 1970s, as Paul Carroll and Chunka Mui reveal in their book Billion
Dollar Lessons, Kodak’s challenges soon mounted on the back of increasing
pressure from its partners—from photo finishers to film retailers—to evaluate
the long-term viability of traditional film. Their 1981 report concluded that their
current business model would remain competitive only until 1990 (not because
customers preferred film, but because digital cameras and photo printers were
initially prohibitively expensive). Yet instead of using the results as a rallying cry
to reinvent their business and tell their stakeholders the truth, Kodak executives
burrowed their heads deeper into the sand. And though they made a trivial foray
into the digital space, their languid pace meant they were undercut by competitors
who had already responded to this new reality. The final nail in the Kodak coffin
came in January of 2012, when the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
This is a chilling tale of what happens in the absence of self-awareness at an
organizational level. If team self-awareness means confronting reality by
fostering candor among team members, organizational self-awareness means
confronting market realities by actively seeking feedback from all
stakeholders—employees, unions, customers, shareholders, suppliers,
communities, legislators—and keeping those stakeholders informed about how
the company is adapting to serve their changing needs. Alan Mulally calls this
“awareness for everybody”—where everyone knows the goal, the status, and the
plan, and has a voice in deciding on the steps needed to get there. And as
technology and social media open up new channels for communication and the
demand for transparency in business increases, the importance of organizational
self-awareness will only continue to grow.
But this practice flies in the face of the way most companies function.
Paradoxically, as we saw with Kodak, it’s not always that organizations don’t
have the information, but rather that they can’t or won’t accept it.
Specifically, unaware companies fail to ask the rather arresting question that my
colleague Chuck Blakeman likes to ask his clients: “What are you pretending not
to know?” Put simply, companies who fail to appreciate their market realities are
fostering a collective delusion that will almost always sow the seeds of their
undoing. Though there are many reasons for this kind of delusion, it is often due
to what Chuck calls “Quarterly Report Syndrome”—prioritizing short-term
results over long-term success.
Organizational delusion, however, isn’t just confined to ignoring external
realities—the same can be true for internal truths. When Alan Mulally first
arrived at Ford, it seemed that every day he would open the Detroit News to find
some horrible story about his new company—engineering issues, manufacturing
problems, harassment claims—that had been leaked by internal sources. Previous
leaders may have reacted by finding out who leaked the story and reading them
the riot act. But for Mulally, this was an opportunity to learn why employees were
airing the company’s dirty laundry in the first place.
So he called up reporter Bryce Hoffman. “Bryce, I want to talk to you about
these pieces you keep publish—”
Hoffman interrupted, “Mr. Mulally, they’re all true.”
“I know they’re true,” Mulally replied. “That’s not why I’m calling. What I want
to know is how you’re getting such accurate and detailed stories.”
“Well…it’s pretty simple,” Hoffman explained. “I walk into my office every
morning and I push ‘play’ on my answering machine. Most employees even leave
their name and number in case I want any clarification.”
Mulally was speechless. “Bryce, why are they doing that?”
“Mr. Mulally, they love this company,” Hoffman told him. “And they’re scared
to death because no one is telling them what’s going on. The issues they’re leaking
are so serious that since management isn’t talking about them, they figure calling
me is the safest way to bring them up!”
Mulally couldn’t believe it. He was reeling. He now had no choice but to push
even harder to ensure that all of Ford’s stakeholders knew everything—the good,
the bad, and the ugly. He would personally respond to every employee e-mail he
received. He’d wander the halls and factories and really talk to people. He’d send
frequent company-wide updates. Mulally and his executive team also began
inviting guests to their BPRs—engineers, analysts, technicians—as well as
soliciting their feedback on the meetings.
But that wasn’t all they did. In a sweeping move to ensure that all employees
understood the company’s path forward (i.e., “awareness for everybody”), Mulally
and his team worked with Ford’s head of Human Resources to design a small blue
card they gave to every employee in the company. On the front was the company
vision, under the headings of “One Team,” “One Plan,” and “One Goal.” On the
back were the expected behaviors that would get them there. It would be easy to
dismiss this as mere optics, or a superficial HR stunt aimed at artificially
engineering employees’ loyalty, but for Mulally, these weren’t just words on a
laminated card—they were a way of life. As Hoffman explains in American Icon,
“it was all there, everything he wanted Ford employees to know and understand.”
As Mulally passed them out, he made a joke that wasn’t really a joke: “Take two
of these and call me in the morning. It’s the cure for what ails you.”
Just months after Mulally asked Bryce Hoffman about the stories being leaked
to the Detroit News, they stopped completely. Mulally again called Hoffman.
“Bryce, there are no more nasty articles about Ford in your newspaper.”
“I know,” he replied. “That’s because there are no more messages on my
answering machine.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Well, it’s pretty obvious,” Hoffman replied. “You’re listening. You’re
including them. They know what’s going on. They don’t need to call me
anymore.”
By opening up the channels of communication, Ford had fundamentally
transformed its relationship with employees. By the time Mulally retired in 2014,
morale was at an all-time high of 87 percent (for comparison, the average
engagement level in the United States that year was 31.5 percent). Thankfully, his
successor was committed to sustaining a culture of awareness for everybody—a
culture where leaders modeled the way, where it felt safe to share the truth, and
where a rigorous, ongoing process supported the free flow of feedback
throughout the organization. But wait—who was Alan Mulally’s successor? You
guessed it. It was none other than Mark Fields.
*1 One board member called this brief but stirring speech the most moving one he’d ever heard
in a boardroom.
*2 “Our expected behaviors and culture: People first; Everyone is included; Compelling vision,
comprehensive strategy, and relentless implementation; Clear performance goals; One plan;
Facts and data; Everyone knows the plan, status, and areas that need special attention; Propose
a plan, positive “find a way” attitude; Respect, listen, help and appreciate each other;
Emotional resilience…trust the process; Have fun. Enjoy the journey and each other.”
*3 Dalio codified his credo in a 123-page document containing 201 of his most strongly held
life and management principles. The tome is required reading for new hires, and Dalio often
uses it as the basis for nightly homework assignments for employees.
*4 The seeds for this process came from Patrick Lencioni’s excellent book The Five
Dysfunctions of a Team, which I consider required reading for all current and aspiring
managers.
*5 If your team isn’t already familiar with the 3R Model for getting feedback from chapter 8, I
strongly suggest that you briefly review this process when presenting the ground rules.
*6 I’m often asked why I suggest this structure (i.e., all team members answer question 1, then
everyone answers questions 2 and 3) rather than having each team member deliver all their
answers at once. First, hearing every team member’s answer to the same question at the same
time, versus answers to multiple questions at once, is the best way to spot patterns. Second, I
find that the urge to deliver all answers at once often stems from a misguided desire to
“soften” the negative feedback (“If I tell Doug what I like about him first, it will be easier to
tell him what I don’t like.”)—but this isn’t the way to build a lasting culture of candor. Selfaware teams bite the bullet, follow the ground rules, and give it to each other straight!
Someone told me I was delusional. I almost fell off my unicorn.
—SOMEECARDS.COM
A tadpole is swimming in a pond. All of a sudden a frog appears in the water next
to him.
“Where did you come from?” the tadpole inquires.
“Somewhere dry,” replies the frog.
“What is ‘dry’?” the tadpole asks.
“It’s when there is no water,” says the frog.
“What is ‘water’?”
The frog is speechless. Emphatically gesturing at the abundant substance
surrounding the tadpole, he asks, “Water? You mean…you can’t see it?”
“No.”
“But how can you not see it? It’s all around you!”
This little allegory perfectly captures how it feels to be around an un-selfaware person. Whether it’s a spouse who doesn’t pick up on social cues, a boss
who seems utterly incapable of seeing her behavior through her employees’ eyes,
or a friend who is oblivious to how miserable his job is making him, the
experience can be downright maddening. How can this smart, otherwise
reasonable person, we wonder, be so utterly blind to the “water” they are swimming
in—to who they are, how they behave, and what impact they have on those around
them?
After surveying thousands of people, I’ve come to the obvious but nevertheless
empirically based conclusion that one doesn’t have to throw a rock very far to hit
a delusional person. In fact, only two of our unicorns reported not knowing such
an individual. (Comically, one decided that since he couldn’t think of any, the
most likely explanation was that he was delusional. He seemed relieved when we
assured him that this wasn’t the case.) Of course, not all unaware people are
created equal; sometimes they are innocuous or amusing, like an oblivious person
sitting next to us on the train or a character on a reality TV show. Other times,
they sap our energy and try our patience: like a hopelessly self-involved in-law or
a delusional boss or co-worker. And still other times, when they’re as close to us
as a partner, a parent, or a child, they can be a seemingly endless source of stress
and heartbreak.
In the workplace, delusional people aren’t just annoying and frustrating; they
can significantly hinder our performance. Scarily, being on a team with just one
unaware person cuts the team’s chances of success in half, and unaware bosses
have a detrimental impact on their employees’ job satisfaction, performance, and
well-being. When reporters at the Washingtonian asked 13,500 employees in the
Washington, D.C., area about their worst boss ever, they were regaled with mindboggling tales of bad behavior. As just a few examples, one manager made
employees who said anything “particularly stupid” stand on their chair as
punishment. Another added up the time people spent in the bathroom and
deducted the corresponding number of vacation hours each pay period. But
perhaps the most unbelievable example came from an employee who tried to take
a day off to attend his father’s funeral. His boss’ response? “We need you now.
What difference does it make to him?”
Now, it would be easy to just dismiss these three bosses—and others like them
—as simply bad people. Malicious jerks. Sociopaths, even. While these things
may or may not be true, most people in the unenviable position of working with
them don’t often stop to think about the role that self-awareness—or a lack
thereof—is playing in the equation. After all, most people, even horrible bosses,
don’t wake up every morning and say, “Today, I’m going to humiliate and upset
everyone I talk to!” Instead, they may just be completely delusional about their
behavior and its impact. But this puts us in a difficult position. Upon learning the
truth, the delusional might very well be horrified and even want to take action to
change. But is it really our responsibility to shock others into awareness? And
even more fundamentally, is it even possible?
The truth is that challenging a delusional person can be risky at best and
disastrous at worst. Remember, almost everyone thinks they’re above average,
morally upstanding, and supremely self-aware—and the most delusional can be
the least receptive to hearing otherwise. After all, as we’ve seen in previous
chapters, when we hear feedback that suggests we’re not what we think we are, as
renowned psychologist William Swann puts it, not only do we feel incompetent,
we “suffer the severe disorientation and psychological anarchy that occurs when
[we] recognize that [our] very existence is threatened.” Pretty heavy, right?
We’ve already heard the stories of so many ordinary people who have radically
improved their own self-awareness, so it must at least be possible to help the
delusional become more self-aware. But not everyone will want to change. (You
know what they say about leading a horse to water, right?) Given this reality,
what is the best way to deal with delusional people? Is it to understand them and
perhaps help them change? Or is it better to simply minimize the collateral
damage of their delusion on our success and happiness? In this chapter, I’ll
address these questions with the goal of providing you a few actionable strategies
for dealing with the three specific types of unaware people you may encounter in
your life—the Lost Cause, the Aware Don’t Care, and the Nudgable—and keep
them from draining your energy, enthusiasm, and happiness.
ACCEPTING WHAT WE CANNOT CHANGE AND CHANGING WHAT
WE CAN (OR HOW TO SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE MARIA)
Robert was happy in his new job as development manager at a small IT security
company. He was passionate about the work he did, had a great boss, and trusted
and genuinely liked his co-workers. In fact, Robert loved everything about his
new job—with one giant exception. That exception was named Maria.
Maria, like most un-self-aware people, seemed to inhabit her own reality. As
the long-time manager of the company’s support desk, she stubbornly clung to the
mistaken assumption that her colleagues shared her every opinion and disparaged
them when they deigned to disagree with her. She used intimidation and bullying
to control her team, and it was hurting morale to the point that they couldn’t
muster the motivation to go out of their way to help their customers. On top of all
that, Maria never let an opportunity slide to remind her colleagues about her
academic credentials and years of experience.
Even Maria’s conflict-avoidant supervisor seemed scared of her. After an
earnest but ineffective attempt to confront the behavior a few years back, he’d
thrown up his hands and effectively given her worst qualities free rein to grow.
Rather unsurprisingly, Maria’s behavior was a constant source of tension and
conflict in the office—and if she had any vague awareness of how it was
affecting the people around her, she certainly wasn’t showing it.
As the days and months dragged on, Robert felt Maria’s impact on the team
growing like a cancer. Her co-workers were afraid to disagree with her lest she
bite their heads off. They were frustrated that her boss wasn’t doing anything to
hold her accountable for her bad behavior. Over time, Robert found himself
waking up each morning less and less excited to come to work.
Then, one day, his prayers were answered in the form of an announcement
from their human resources director. Each member of the company’s leadership
team (of which he and Maria were members) would get the chance to receive
anonymous written feedback from their colleagues. This is our chance to put it all
on the table! Robert thought.
When it came time to put pen to paper, Robert decided that he had nothing to
lose by being brutally honest about the specific behaviors that were driving
everyone insane. “Maria takes her role very seriously and puts the hours in,” he
wrote. “But she doesn’t realize her harsh tone, over-policing of staff, and constant
references to her qualifications and experience combine to create a toxic
atmosphere that is really hurting team morale and performance.” When Robert
finished recording his feedback, he felt oddly optimistic. She’s really not a mean
person, he decided, she probably just has no idea how much her behavior is
damaging our team.
The human resources director collected and compiled everyone’s feedback.
And a few days later, the eight members of their leadership team—Robert,
Maria, and their peers—gathered in a conference room to discuss what each
person had learned from the process. Robert found himself nervous but hopeful
that today would be the day they finally addressed the elephant in the room.
The morning moved at glacial pace. For some reason, Maria had asked to go
last, and the team was holding its collective breath with nervous anticipation.
When it was finally her turn, the air in the room was like hot marshmallow.
“I was really shocked to hear how you all see me,” she began. “It was not a
pleasant experience going through your feedback.” For a moment, she looked
upset. The team was now on the edge of their seats. Would this be the moment
that she’d see the error of her ways? Would Maria’s bad spell finally be lifted?
“But honestly, I just didn’t recognize myself in any of these comments.”
Even though it felt like the walls were crashing in, the room was utterly silent.
No one was quite sure how to respond to the level of delusion to which Maria
clearly still clung. Robert cleared his throat and tentatively asked, “Maria, what
did you hear from the team?”
“One thing’s for sure. I didn’t hear anything I actually need to change,” she
flatly replied.
“What makes you say that?” he probed, trying to remain calm.
“Well, someone said that I was full of myself—always talking about my
qualifications and experience. That person was obviously just jealous of my
success.”
“Can you think of any other reason someone might have said that?” he
carefully asked.
“What other reason is there?” Sensing an opening, Robert opened his mouth to
speak. But before he could get a word out, Maria continued her thought. “There is
no other reason.”
Robert looked back at Maria, blinking. In a split second, he weighed the pros
and cons of coming clean that he had written the comment and pointing to any
one of the many examples of the behavior that had inspired it. But despite his
initial optimism, Robert suddenly realized that no good would come of it.
Unfortunately, he was right. A full year passed since Robert’s team completed
this exercise, and a lot of things are different at work—a lot of things, that is,
except for Maria. While each and every other team member had made a
concerted effort to respond to the feedback they received, Maria continued to
remain willfully ignorant; not only dismissing all of her colleagues’ comments, but
repeatedly reminding them how wrong they’d been.
Maria represents the first of three categories of delusional people: the Lost
Cause. Lost Causes cling to their delusion with a righteous, indignant, and
unshakable zeal. Because they can’t (or won’t) consider any other opinion besides
their own, anyone who attempts to shine a light on their less desirable
characteristics will get the proverbial flashlight thwacked out of their hand.
Because they already see themselves as pretty close to perfect, they’re rarely if
ever willing to entertain the notion that they might have room to improve.
Although you can occasionally get them to listen to feedback by appealing to
their self-interest (“This behavior is hurting your reputation”), it is usually
pointless to challenge their self-views.
When you discover that someone in your life is a Lost Cause, it’s easy to feel
hopeless. The good news is that although we can’t impose insight on Lost Causes,
it doesn’t mean that we can’t take action to minimize their impact on our success
and happiness. Indeed, there is much to learn from how Robert learned to
peacefully coexist with Maria—primarily by working to manage his own
reactions and better understand her impact on him and the rest of the team.
Once Robert realized that Maria had no desire to improve her self-insight, he
challenged himself to adopt the mindset of compassion without judgment. Rather
than getting constantly bent out of shape about her deficits, he realized that they
were simply on different journeys. If we revisit our “horse race of awareness”
analogy from chapter 2, Robert was picking up speed while Maria was dead last
—but with this realization, he was able to view her as someone who was simply
struggling, rather than as a malicious megalomaniac. It was actually freeing to
realize that Maria’s self-awareness was not his problem to fix—it was hers and
hers alone.
Robert isn’t the only one to adopt such an approach; when surveyed about how
they deal with the Lost Causes in their lives, only about half of our unicorns
reported directly intervening, but nearly all used strategies to control their own
reactions. In his superb book The No Asshole Rule, Stanford professor Bob Sutton
shares an instructive metaphor for managing our reactions to Lost Causes. (And
for that matter, to the second type, the Aware Don’t Care, whom you’ll read about
in a minute.) Imagine you’re white-water rafting. Your boat is calmly floating
down a picturesque river, when all of a sudden you see a rough patch ahead. As
you paddle through the rapids, you’re abruptly thrown into the violent waters.
Most people in this situation try to fight it: kicking and flailing to get back to
the boat; trying to swim toward the shore; futilely clinging to a slippery rock. But
those strategies are actually more likely to kill us than save us, and the less we
battle the current, the sooner we’ll find ourselves in calmer waters. Robert liked
this metaphor—it reminded him that he was actually more in control than it
seemed. If Maria said something antagonistic to him, for example, rather than
standing up to her or trying to make her see the error of her ways, he would
simply imagine floating feet-first, and getting out of the rough waters as quickly
as possible.
When dealing with a delusional person like this, it’s easy to write him or her
off as simply a bad person. But what if we challenged ourselves to name a few of
their positive characteristics? This is an example of another tool; one that draws
on the mindfulness tool of reframing, or looking at our problem from a different
perspective. When Maria brought her 13-year-old daughter to work, Robert was
genuinely struck by how Maria treated her: she was unbelievably kind, fiercely
loyal, and demonstrably proud. To stay in control of his reactions when he was
working with Maria, Robert kept that image in his mind and forced himself to
conjure it when she wasn’t behaving quite as magnanimously toward him.
Another technique that’s equally applicable to Lost Causes is one that Robert
originally learned in elementary school. In fifth grade, the class bully set his sights
on Robert, who would come home every day crying and fearful of the next day’s
abuse. This went on for weeks, until his mother said something that he never
forgot. “Honey,” she told him, “this kid is a bully. He’s mean, he’s cruel, and I
know how much he’s hurting you. But have you ever asked yourself, what can he
teach me?” Initially, young Robert thought his mother was a bit nuts—what in the
world could he learn from that malevolent monster?—but soon he realized that
perhaps he’d been too hasty. Perhaps the experience was an opportunity to learn
something about himself. Maybe, he thought, he’s showing me that I need to do a
better job sticking up for myself. And so he did.
Robert was reminded of this a few months after his failed showdown with
Maria. Since that day in the conference room, she was aiming an inordinate
amount of ire his way. And one evening, after a particularly hellish day, he’d
finally had enough. He was going to quit. But as he began drafting his resignation,
he remembered his mother’s words. Maria, he realized, was just a different kind
of bully. So Robert asked himself the question his mother had asked all those
years before. Was this actually an opportunity to learn a few lessons about dealing
with difficult people and therefore improve himself?
When he gave this new perspective a trial run, it worked almost instantly. He
began to view the situation not as a soul-eroding marathon, but as an interesting
and beneficial challenge. Though she had no idea, Maria was helping Robert
increase his self-awareness and turn those lemons of delusion into lemonade.
Lost Causes aren’t the only type of delusional people out there. Let’s now look
at a second variety, who, as we’ll see, can seem indistinguishable from Lost
Causes, but in reality suffer from a much, much different problem.
WHEN A LITTLE SELF-KNOWLEDGE ISN’T ENOUGH
I was once hired by a manufacturing company to coach Jerry, a VP who was a
successor for their chief operating officer role. From our first meeting, I was
impressed with Jerry’s intelligence, instincts, and insight. But these characteristics
couldn’t have been more different from those of his boss, Daniel, whose behavior
was the stuff of legend. The current COO’s “leadership” techniques included
yelling at his direct reports when they disappointed him, humiliating them in
front of their colleagues, and causing even the most composed professionals to
lose their cool. Unsurprisingly, Jerry’s department had the highest turnover rate in
the company, along with the lowest morale.
Naturally, I had lots of questions about this mysterious Daniel. Did he have
even an inkling about how ineffective his approach was? Had anyone ever
mustered the courage to confront him? And if they had, did he at any point even
try to change his behavior? I would soon learn the answer, and it wasn’t what I
expected.
After Jerry had set his own goals for our coaching process, the two of us
decided to sit down with Daniel to make sure he was on board. Jerry and I made a
plan for the conversation as we waited in the cavernous seating area outside
Daniel’s office. When we were ushered in, I stuck my hand out to introduce
myself to Daniel. Now, for some context, I’ve often been accused of having an
unusually firm handshake (when I first met my graduate advisor, for example, his
first word to me was literally “OW!”). But when I shook Daniel’s hand, his grip
was so aggressive that I felt like he was trying to get me to drop to the floor. That
was my first clue about what was really going on.
Luckily, Jerry had a gift for dealing with Daniel that bordered on magical, and
the meeting got off to a great start. Jerry’s first goal was to delegate more
effectively so he could focus more on the strategic aspects of his role. Daniel was
on board. But he didn’t quite feel the same way about Jerry’s second goal, which
was to work on better engaging his employees. Before Jerry could finish
explaining his plan to do so, Daniel held his hand up as if to say, “Stop talking
right now.” Jerry obliged.
“Jerry, this one’s a waste of your time.”
“Why is that, Daniel?” he calmly asked, as if he had anticipated this question
from his rather predictable boss.
“Because it doesn’t matter if your employees are ‘engaged.’ The most effective
management tool I’ve ever come across is fear. If they fear you, they will get the
work done. It’s really that simple.”
I was so shocked that I almost fell out of my chair. I have heard executives say
a lot of ridiculous things over the years, but I had never met someone who openly
admitted to a strategy of intimidation. And Daniel didn’t just admit to this
strategy; he was bragging about it. That’s when I realized that, unlike so many of
the delusional bosses I’ve encountered in my coaching work, Daniel knew exactly
how he was behaving—and it didn’t bother him in the slightest. Though many of
his actions screamed Lost Cause, his was an entirely different problem. Daniel
was a textbook case of the second type of delusional person: one I call Aware
Don’t Care.
Whereas a Lost Cause’s primary issue is a lack of insight and no motivation to
acquire it, the Aware Don’t Care know exactly what they’re doing—and the
negative impact they’re having on others—but they act that way anyway. Why?
They truly believe that their counterproductive (often borderline-abusive)
behavior will help them get what they want. And therein lies their delusion. From
Daniel’s perspective, he (wrongly) believed that cultivating fear helped him do his
job better.
I have an uncle who recently retired from a long career as a surgeon. During
his residency, one of his attending physicians was an avid marathon runner; this
starkly contrasted with the residents, most of whom rarely left the hospital, let
alone found time to exercise. Every morning, rounds began on the fifth floor. But
rather than meeting his residents there, the attending required them to gather on
the first floor and march up five flights of stairs together. One day, my breathless
uncle asked him if he knew how hard it was for everyone to climb the stairs. “Of
course I do,” the attending replied. “I do it so none of you will ask me questions.”
There we have it, folks. Aware, and definitely didn’t care.
But since the behaviors of the Aware Don’t Care can so closely resemble those
of a Lost Cause, how can we tell the difference? Sometimes, we learn the answer
only when we confront them—as Robert did with Maria, and as my uncle did
with his attending. Other times, though, there can be clues. Lost Causes usually
show inconsistency between what they say about themselves and how they
behave. Remember Steve, the construction executive from chapter 3? When I
first met him, he waxed poetic about what a great leader he was and how much
his employees respected him; both claims were in direct contradiction to his
actions. The Aware Don’t Care, on the other hand, show a different pattern. They
are likely to acknowledge their behavior, but brush it off or defend it (i.e., “Yeah,
I know I yelled at her, but she deserved it” or “Of course I’m pushy with clients—
that’s the only way to make the sale”). Like Daniel, they might even take to
bragging about their unsavory characteristics.
Another way to tell Lost Causes from the Aware Don’t Care is to look at their
perspective-taking abilities. Lost Causes tend to believe that their way of thinking
is the only way—like Maria, who assumed that everyone else shared her opinions
and freaked out when they didn’t. The Aware Don’t Care, on the other hand,
often show that they understand their behavior from other people’s perspectives
—like the hospital attending who knew just how onerous those five flights of
stairs really were—but they also demonstrate the belief that the behavior is
productive. And for that reason, it’s usually not worth the energy to try to change
them.
When we learned about the Cult of Self earlier in the book, we saw that
narcissists—people characterized by grandiose levels of self-admiration—are an
especially delusional bunch. But while a lack of self-insight has traditionally been
a cornerstone of narcissism, recent research has indicated that they possess
something called “pseudo-insight.” For example, and rather shockingly, one of
the best ways to identify a narcissist is to simply ask them whether they are, in
fact, a narcissist—more often than not, they’ll reply in the affirmative. But why
on earth are they so willing to admit to toxic traits, like egotism, selfishness, and
vanity? Just like Daniel, they are aware that they possess these characteristics, but
don’t see anything wrong with them. In fact, they tend to view them as positive! As
social psychologist Brad Bushman observes, narcissists “believe they are superior
to other people and are fine with saying that publicly.”
There is also evidence that narcissists have at least some awareness of the
(generally inevitable) erosion of their personal relationships, but they don’t seem
to recognize their role. Instead, they blame others and cling to their overly
positive self-assessments. One fairly amazing way they do this is to conclude that
others are just too dim to appreciate their brilliance. And while narcissistic
leaders think extremely highly of their leadership performance, they are rated
lowest in effectiveness by their teams—the only people they are impressing, in
other words, are themselves.
While the two techniques mentioned above (floating feet-first and asking
“what can they teach me?”) will also work with the Aware Don’t Care, there is
another that’s particularly well suited for them. I first came up with the laugh
track when I had the misfortune of working for an Aware Don’t Care boss many
years ago. After a series of public humiliations, including being reamed out for a
relatively small mistake in front of our entire leadership team, I was at the end of
my rope. I figured I had two choices: I could quit, or I could find a better way to
deal with my manager. Because I adored every other aspect of my job, I decided
to try the latter. One day, after a particularly unpleasant encounter with said boss,
I happened to recall my favorite TV show growing up, The Mary Tyler Moore
Show.
Mary’s boss was a surly man named Lou Grant, played by the incomparable Ed
Asner. On a good day, Lou Grant was grumpy and hotheaded; on a bad day, he
was nasty and downright abusive. But because his outrageous comments were
often followed by a canned laugh track, to the viewer, they seemed comical and
surprisingly endearing. I decided that the next time my boss said something so
cruel that it made me want to cry, I’d imagine a laugh track behind it instead.
Now, it would be inaccurate to say that this completely transformed my
experience of working for him, but the tool did make it that much more bearable
(and occasionally, hilarious).
These stories are proof that when it comes to delusional people who refuse to
change, by managing our own reactions, we often have more control than we
think. But unfortunately, changing our mindset is not always sufficient. There are
times when we’ll need to proactively assert ourselves and set boundaries, and
there will be times—if all else fails—when the only tool we have at our disposal
is to remove ourselves from the situation.
I have a good friend who, in addition to having a successful coaching practice,
is a rather prolific writer. A few years back, Scott was hired by a well-known
entrepreneur—let’s call him Joe—to perform some initial research for a book he
wanted to write. In their first meeting, Scott was blown away by how down-toearth Joe was for a multimillionaire. Seconds after they met, Joe enveloped Scott
in a huge bear hug, and throughout their conversation, he seemed positively
enraptured by everything Scott had to say. This is going to be a blast! Scott
thought excitedly.
The contract Scott drew up was simple and unambiguous—or so he thought.
He would perform in-person interviews with 10 CEOs who shared Joe’s
management philosophy, write a report for each, and submit it, along with his
travel expenses, to get paid for that portion of the work. The day before his
meeting with the first CEO, which was taking place in New York, Scott’s
assistant Jenna had set up a final call to review the interview questions. Jenna
dialed in at the top of the call to make sure everything was on track and then left
Joe and Scott to proceed with their conversation.
As the call came to a close, Joe asked, “You’re good on the subject areas I need
covered tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I’m good,” said Scott. “If you think of any others while I’m in the air,
just pass them along to Jenna. She’ll make sure I get them the moment I land.”
“Sure,” said Joe. “She seems very efficient.”
“Oh, Jenna’s the best,” Scott replied enthusiastically. “I call her my right-hand
woman. We’ve built the whole business together. I don’t know what I’d do without
her.”
Initially Scott thought nothing of this portion of the conversation. But then, just
a few minutes after hanging up, his phone rang again. It was Jenna.
“Is everything okay?”
“Sure,” she said. “But you’ll never guess who just called me? Joe!”
“Is there a problem?”
“I don’t know how to say this, exactly…but he offered me a job.”
Scott was stunned. “Wh-what?”
“He offered to double my salary. And he didn’t even ask what my salary was!”
“You must be kidding,” said Scott, suddenly choked with feelings of anger and
panic.
“I turned him down, of course,” she quickly added. “But I thought you should
know.”
That night, Scott struggled to sleep. How could Joe do that just minutes after
he’d shared how valuable Jenna was to his business? He knew Jenna was happy
and fairly compensated, and he felt lucky that she’d had the loyalty to turn Joe
down. But the whole incident had left him feeling belittled and betrayed. He
decided to confront Joe the next morning and state his needs.
“Joe, I wanted to talk to you about what happened yesterday after our call.”
There was a long pause as Scott waited for Joe to realize he’d been found out
and apologize for his completely unprofessional behavior. “Jenna told me that
you tried to hire her away from me.”
“Yeah,” Joe sighed. “And she turned me down on the spot. But that’s okay. You
know, I have to be honest, most people in her position would crawl over broken
glass to work with me. Frankly, the fact she turned me down makes me question
her judgment. It’s really no loss to me.”
Scott couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It almost seemed as if Joe thought
he was calling to apologize to him. The multimillionaire was clearly clueless about
the impact of his actions—not just on their relationship, but potentially on the
success of the very project he’d hired Scott to complete. “Look, Joe, can I ask
you a favor?” said Scott. “Can you please refrain from hiring my people?”
Another long pause followed. Apparently, Joe had to think it over. But finally,
he agreed to Scott’s request.
Though Scott was understandably unsettled by the whole encounter, he hoped
it would be a minor bump in the road. He toiled over the report for his first
interview, and a few weeks later, he submitted a 15-page product to Joe,
accompanied by receipts for his travel expenses, just as they had agreed. Later
that day, Scott received a phone call.
“Scotty,” said Joe. “I got your report. I’ve got to tell you, I’ve decided I don’t
want this guy or his company anywhere near my book. The stuff he was saying
about staff feedback? One-hundred-percent Texas horseshit.”
Scott was naturally disappointed to hear that he’d wasted three weeks of work.
But his disappointment was nothing compared to the fury he was about to
experience.
“I’ll reimburse your travel expenses, of course,” Joe continued. “So don’t worry
about that. Just send your receipts to my office.”
Scott’s heart felt like it had frozen in his chest. “And, uh…my fee?” he said.
“I’ll send the invoice for the fee at the same time?”
“Scotty, no,” said Joe, suddenly impatient. “I just told you. This thing is of no
use to me. I’m not paying for horseshit.”
Hardly containing his anger, Scott decided he had no choice but to assertively
state his needs. “Joe, this is not reasonable at all. You approved the interviewee
and the questions. The report is exactly what you asked for. I have to be paid.”
After a long discussion—and Scott’s repeated insistence that Joe honor their
agreement—the irascible entrepreneur finally agreed to pay up. But Scott was still
(understandably) quite perturbed. Of course, at this point he seriously considered
taking the money and running. But because he believed in the project—and was
getting paid quite handsomely—he decided to try one more thing before he threw
in the towel. This time, he would create better guidelines for their relationship.
What they needed were clear boundaries they could both agree on.
Scott added about four pages of specifics to the contract, spelling out the exact
requirements for the work product, and just in case, the exact travel expenses that
Joe would reimburse him for. After a few back-and-forths, he was able to get
Joe’s signature and set out to schedule his second interview. Now, even for
someone as narcissistic and delusional as Joe, there could be no doubt as to where
they stood. Or so he thought.
Unfortunately, Joe’s behavior persisted. At one point, and in direct opposition
to their contract, he even refused to pay for Scott’s expenses because he’d taken a
short taxi ride instead of the subway. Up until now, Scott had been doing
everything he could to deal with his unaware client. He’d assertively stated his
needs and aggressively clarified his boundaries. And he’d attempted to manage
his own reactions. But his concern continued to grow. How bad is this going to
get? Scott wondered. He decided to pick up the phone and call a few mutual
acquaintances to get more information.
The most concerning data came from Candace, one of Joe’s longtime
executives. In the last two years, Candace had been diagnosed with a serious
autoimmune disease, and despite knowing about her diagnosis and what it meant,
Joe had apparently continued to summon her into the office at all hours of the
night and on weekends. “He’s killing me,” Candace half joked, “and he has
absolutely no idea.”
As he hung up with Candace, Scott finally decided that enough was enough. It
was time to walk away. This cruel and unfeeling behavior was proof positive that
Joe simply was never going to change, and the money Scott was sacrificing was
minimal compared to the sanity he would be regaining. And in case you’re
doubting Scott’s decision, this might be a good time to tell you the topic of the
book Joe was writing. It was a book on…wait for it…emotional intelligence. It just
doesn’t get any more delusional than that, does it?
Granted, not everyone dealing with a delusional person has the luxury of
walking away. But as Scott discovered, when someone is as thoroughly mired in
delusion as Joe, the problems they create in our lives don’t magically disappear. In
many cases, they intensify over time. If we’ve exhausted all of our options—
changing our mindset, stating our needs, and reinforcing our boundaries—but still
can’t manage, we must face these situations with unflinching honesty about who
they are and the true probability that they will ever change. Sometimes, after
weighing those factors, we may indeed decide that whatever the sacrifice—
whether it’s leaving a job we love, cutting ties with an impossibly unaware friend
or family member, or giving up a lucrative contract—our best option may be to
pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and move forward.
HELPING THE DELUSIONAL DECODE THE FLASHING LIGHTS
Mercifully, though, not everyone is unreachable. Indeed, the third type of
delusional person, the Nudgable, is one whose behavior we absolutely can have
an impact on, at least to a degree. What sets the Nudgable apart from their more
hopeless counterparts is that they genuinely want to be better; they just don’t
know that they need to change their approach. And unlike Lost Causes and the
Aware Don’t Care, they are generally surprisingly receptive to receiving this
information—that is, when it’s delivered in the right way.
The day I turned 16, I joyfully experienced the classic rite of passage of getting
my driver’s license. Eager to exercise my newfound freedom, I begged my
mother to let me drive to school and back the next day. She hesitated,
understandably, because I had a play rehearsal that went late into the evening and
little practice driving in the dark. But eventually she relented. That evening, I got
into my car, turned on my headlights, and headed home. Exhilarated to be behind
the wheel, I thought everything was going great. Then I noticed that almost every
car I passed was blinking their lights at me. Why is everybody doing that? I
wondered.
I soon found out. As soon as I made it home and pulled into the driveway, my
mother burst out of the garage, frantically waving at me to turn off my brights,
“Honey, you’re blinding the entire neighborhood!”
All of a sudden it made sense. Completely unbeknownst to me, I had been
shining my brights directly at Denver drivers for miles—and what’s more, they’d
all been trying to tell me as much. I just couldn’t, quite literally, read the signals I
was getting. This is a good metaphor for what life is like for unaware people.
Though they can’t decode what the flashing lights in front of them mean, other
people usually can. And if they’re open to it, we can help the unaware see
themselves through our eyes.
Call me an optimist, but I believe that more often than not, most unaware
people are at least somewhat Nudgable. Many times, rather than representing a
deep disconnect from reality, their unawareness results from far less pervasive
and sometimes even situational causes. For example, research has suggested a
positive correlation between stress and unawareness: that is, the more stress we
are under, the more unrealistic we tend to be about our abilities, characteristics,
and behaviors. This makes intuitive sense. Have you noticed that people seem to
be most delusional about their behavior in times of stress? Unawareness isn’t
always an indictment of someone’s potential to develop insight—they may just
need a bit of a nudge.
My friend Lisa has been on the board of a local non-profit for nearly a decade.
A few months ago, they brought on new a board member, let’s call him Phil, who
was more than a touch delusional. In no time at all, Phil was annoying everybody,
constantly bragging about his successes in the private sector with no apparent
understanding of how he was alienating those around him. That is, until he
realized that the other board members were giving him the cold shoulder. When
he had tried to join a few committees, he’d been effectively shut out.
One evening after a board meeting, Phil approached Lisa with a frustrated look
on his face. He asked her if, as the longest-serving board member, she might give
him some advice. He shared his frustration and asked if he was doing anything
that was contributing to the problem. As is often the case with the Nudgable, Phil
knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t quite read the signs. Lisa suggested
that he pay closer attention to his language: instead of telling everyone everything
he had done, she gently suggested, perhaps he could ask his colleagues questions
to get to know them better. Phil was taken aback as he processed the information.
He then proceeded to announce that he would change his approach starting at that
very moment. Though it took a little longer than Phil may have hoped, he was
eventually able to win over his fellow board members, and was invited to join
more than one committee.
In Phil’s case, Lisa had the perfect opening to deliver her feedback.
Unfortunately, though, not every unaware person is savvy enough to seek it out.
After all, the big catch-22 of self-awareness is that the people who need it
most are usually the least likely to know they need it. So is it ever a good idea
to confront an unaware person more directly? And if so, how can we guard
against the inevitable risks? How can we deliver these important insights without
the recipient shooting the messenger (i.e., you)? As we’ll see from the following
story, when it comes to the Nudgable, a little compassion, coupled with some
thoughtful preparation, can really go a long way.
It was the week before Christmas in a picture-perfect mountain hotel. Sophia and
Emma, who’d been best friends since kindergarten, had been having a fantastic
time in Vermont, courtesy of Emma’s generous and successful father. He’d
treated them to seven days of private snowmobiling lessons, lavish shopping trips,
and pricey dinners. But sitting in the luxurious suite they’d been sharing as the
gold December sun shone through the windows, Emma suddenly looked anxious.
“What’s up?” asked Sophia, sitting on the edge of the bed with a freshly made
cup of coffee.
Emma was peering around the open door. “Is my dad around?” she whispered.
“What, Frank?” said Sophia. “He went to the gym to find your mom. Why?”
“It’s the ski lesson he booked for tomorrow,” said Emma, rubbing the back of
her neck. “I don’t think I want to go.”
“Really?”
“Really!” she replied, wide-eyed. “Why would anyone strap slippery wood
planks to their feet and slide down a mountain at a high speed…voluntarily? I
want to live to see Christmas.”
“So don’t go!” laughed Sophia. “Just kick back in the spa. What’s the big deal?”
“It’s Dad,” she said. “He’ll chew me out for sure.”
Sophia (who also happens to be a self-awareness unicorn) did her best to
reassure her old friend that she was worrying too much. After all, Sophia had
known Emma’s father for years. Frank was an extraordinary man. He’d overcome
a difficult childhood to put himself through college and then medical school, and
he had since become a world-renowned surgeon. She knew him to be physically
imposing, at nearly seven feet tall with broad shoulders and a Hemingway beard,
but also extremely kind. For a long time, Frank had supported Sophia’s dream of
becoming a doctor, and been something of a mentor, arranging informational
interviews with his colleagues, taking her to lunch to talk about her plans, and
even helping with her medical school applications earlier that fall.
Of course, she’d heard about Frank’s “other side” from Emma for years, who’d
often complained that he could be domineering, cruel, and controlling. For
example, Emma had struggled with her grades in college, and at one point
announced to her parents that she was going to take a year off from school to
“regroup.” Frank had apparently lashed out at her, complaining about how much
money he was wasting on her education and how ungrateful she was. This, of
course, was devastating to Emma. “He wields his wealth and success like a
weapon,” she’d bemoaned, more than once.
“I know you guys locked horns when you were growing up,” said Sophia. “But
he’s not going to want to ruin Christmas making an issue of something dumb like
a ski lesson.”
“Maybe,” replied Emma, hesitantly at first. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”
Minutes later, Frank returned.
“Go on!” mouthed Sophia, gently pushing her friend toward the lounge space.
“Dad?” said Emma, leaning on the door frame. “Would you mind if I sat out
skiing tomorrow? Would that be okay?”
As he walked to the wardrobe to hang his wife’s coat, Frank’s expression barely
changed. “Sure,” he said flatly, his shoulders shrugging ever so slightly. Pleasantly
surprised by her father’s non-explosive reaction, Emma put the whole thing out of
her mind.
The next morning, as they were all heading back to the suite after breakfast,
Frank ran into a colleague in the lobby. They made pleasant conversation as an
open fire crackled and popped and sweater-clad guests milled about.
But when the woman asked about Frank’s plans that day, his warm demeanor
instantly dissipated. “Well, we three,” he said, gesturing wildly toward himself,
Emma’s mother, and Sophia, “are going to be taking a private skiing lesson. But
someone,” he pointed at his daughter and dramatically rolled his eyes, “is too
afraid to go skiing and decided to cancel at the last minute—and it’s too late to
get my money back. Can you believe how ungrateful she is?” Frank bellowed, at a
volume that reverberated through the lobby so loudly that he might as well have
made an announcement on their PA system.
A long, awkward silence followed. Suddenly, Emma, choking back tears,
stormed off without a word. As she went, Frank watched her with a look of
genuine confusion. He turned at Sophia as if to ask, “Was it something I said?”
Clearly, he had no idea how his brutish words had injured his sensitive daughter.
For the rest of that day and long into the evening, Sophia couldn’t stop thinking
about what she had witnessed. And the more she pondered Frank’s behavior, the
more incensed she became on her friend’s behalf. She knew she had basically two
options: to confront Frank or stay painfully MUM and see his behavior continue.
Sophia felt compelled to talk to him, but she didn’t know whether it would do any
good. And she was pretty sure that either way, she’d be putting herself right in the
firing line of his outrageous temper.
To help her decide what to do, Sophia asked herself several questions. The first
was, do the benefits of having this conversation outweigh the potential risks?
Sophia started with the benefits: first and foremost, she cared about Emma. If she
could do anything to minimize the hurt that Frank caused her in the future, she’d
do it in a second. Sophia also cared about Frank and knew that if this behavior
continued, it could effectively end his relationship with his daughter.
She imagined the worst-case scenario if their conversation went south. The
most painful thing that could happen was that Frank would never want to speak to
her again, but while that was possible, she had a hunch that the more realistic
worst-case scenario was that he would yell at her and sulk for the rest of the
vacation. So, given these two options—a better Frank or a worse vacation—she
was happy to risk the latter in service of the former.
But even once Sophia decided that the benefits outweighed the costs, she still
had another angle to consider. She asked: Does he know there’s a problem?
Sophia believed (and the research confirms this) that if someone isn’t feeling any
pain or frustration, they might not have enough motivation to change. In Frank’s
case, though, he clearly knew something was wrong—his pained look when
Emma ran away was proof enough—he just didn’t know he was the reason.
A related question was: Is his behavior counter to his best interests? When
someone is acting in a way that’s inconsistent with their values and priorities,
pointing out the discrepancy can be quite motivating, if a little jarring. Research
has shown that human beings have a desire for congruence—that is, they want
their behaviors and beliefs to match—and when they don’t, they experience an
uncomfortable sense of cognitive dissonance. In Frank’s case, Sophia knew that
he cared deeply about being a good dad to Emma. She even remembered a recent
conversation where he had mentioned that the reason he worked so hard was to
give Emma a better childhood than he’d had. Pointing out how his behavior was
impeding those goals, Sophia reasoned, was likely to create an alarm-clock
moment.
The answer to Sophia’s final question—Do I think that he will listen to me?—
wasn’t as straightforward. Power differentials, like the one she had with Frank,
make conversations like this very difficult. (Remember how hard it is to speak
truth to power?) Indeed, for a 21-year-old pre-med student to think she should
tell a successful 52-year-old surgeon how to act might seem silly on the face of it.
But Sophia thought that the trust they shared would tip the balance. Frank
respected her, trusted her motives, and recognized what a good friend she was to
Emma; he had often remarked that she was his daughter’s most mature and
responsible friend. What’s more, she reminded herself that he had been open to
smaller pieces of feedback—albeit of a very different type—from her in the past,
recalling a recent conversation in which she had playfully corrected his grammar.
He’d seemed annoyed for a moment, then grinned and said, “You know, you’re
the only person I would ever let correct me on something like that.”
After carefully weighing all sides of the issue, Sophia decided that she was
going to talk to Frank. Instinctively knowing that the longer she waited, the more
likely he’d be to minimize or even forget the inciting event, she decided to do it
the very next day. Luckily, she had a window of opportunity already built in:
Sophia and Frank were both early risers, and in the first few days of their
vacation, they’d settled into an early-morning coffee routine. Tomorrow, Sophia
would invite him to breakfast instead.
Later that night, as Sophia lay in bed sleeplessly staring at the ceiling, she
figured she’s try to channel her nerves to make a plan for the conversation and
think through a few contingencies. When morning finally came, she marched to
their suite’s small kitchen and came face-to-face with Frank. “Frank, I’m
starving,” she said as nonchalantly as possible. “Do you want to grab breakfast at
the restaurant downstairs?” “Sure!” he replied, and off they went.
The hostess walked them through the nearly empty restaurant and gestured
toward a table in the back. Once they ordered, the pair had an uneasy chuckle
about the unnerving number of stuffed animal heads on the wall above them, then
discussed Sophia’s plans for medical school the following year. “Frank,” she told
him, “I really can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done to help me get
here. I don’t think I’ve ever told you how grateful I am for your advice. You’re an
incredible doctor and an even better friend.”
Sophia could literally see Frank puffing up across the table. But she wasn’t just
buttering him up. Not only was her gratitude authentic, Sophia know that
expressing it had another benefit. She’d just learned about self-affirmation in her
social psychology course and thought that affirming Frank’s positive qualities as a
doctor and friend would prepare him to hear about his less-than-ideal parental
characteristics. (Incidentally, Sophia was right: affirmation has similar benefits
with others as when we use it with ourselves.)
Smiling, Frank replied, “Wow, Sophia, thank you. It’s so nice to feel
appreciated! And so rare for me,” he said, winking at her in a not-so-subtle
reference to yesterday’s episode. Sophia didn’t think her opening would come this
fast, but she decided to go with it.
“What do you mean?” she innocently inquired.
“I’ve just had it up to here with Emma. I mean, I’m sorry, I know she’s your
friend and I probably shouldn’t be telling you this. But can you believe how
ungrateful she was yesterday?”
Emma mentally reviewed the plan she’d come up with the night before. She’d
decided to begin by asking questions to see if Frank could reach a place of insight
on his own, without her having to forcibly drag him there.
“What was going on there, do you think?” she asked.
“The sad fact is, my daughter can be ungrateful.” He lifted a croissant from the
basket at the center of the table. “All my life, I’ve spent, I mean, my God,
hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to make her happy. And all my life, she’s
thrown it back in my face. Skipping out on the ski lesson? I should’ve expected
it.” He ripped the croissant in half and studied it with an air of faint disgust. “I
was kind of hoping that she was finally starting to grow up.”
“Fair enough,” Sophia remarked, “but what do you think was going on from
Emma’s perspective?”
“She was acting like a baby!”
Sophia tried again. “Frank, I can completely understand how mad that made
you. But from Emma’s perspective, why do you think she was so hurt?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
Sophia paused. She was waiting for an “aha moment,” but all she got was an
old man angrily chewing a pastry. “Okay, you were both really upset, right?” she
said. Frank nodded. “And you don’t want that to happen in the future?” More
nodding. “So don’t you think it’s important to figure out why Emma reacted that
way?”
Frank cocked his head, seemingly curious. Then, as if on cue, he punted
Sophia’s question back to her. “What do you think was going on with Emma?”
Though this was a signal that he was open to an alternative version of the
events, Sophia was worried that if she came right out with Emma’s perspective,
he’d think she was taking sides, or wrongly conclude that his daughter had sent
her friend to do her dirty work. Sophia carefully began, “Frank, I haven’t talked
to Emma about this yet, so I can only infer, but think about it for a minute. She
was obviously really scared to go skiing.” Frank rolled his eyes. She continued,
“Then you lashed out at her for it, and in public, no less.”
“What do you mean? I was just making polite conversation.”
“Well, it was a conversation,” she said. “But it definitely wasn’t polite.” Frank
seemed taken aback by Sophia’s candor. There was a tense silence. But then his
shocked expression evolved into a small smile. She plodded on, “Did you notice
the exact moment Emma got upset?”
“Was it when I was talking about how she didn’t want to come with us to the
ski lesson?” Sophia nodded. “But I still don’t understand why.”
Emboldened, Sophia offered, “I think Emma was humiliated. She was already
embarrassed about being so afraid, and you put it out there for everyone to see.
And as for the fact that she walked away, she was probably trying not to get in a
fight with you in front of a stranger.”
Finally, a faint glimmer of understanding came over his face. “So what I said
made Emma feel like she was being punished for not wanting to go skiing?”
“Well, maybe. And Frank, if I may, there was one more thing I think Emma
might have been reacting to. But let me ask you first: How did the issue of money
factor into that whole situation, in your mind?”
Reaching for another croissant, he replied suspiciously, “I already told you. I
was mad because Emma was wasting my money.”
“I understand. But how do you think money factored into the situation for
Emma? Do you think it’s possible that she felt like you were holding the money
you spent on the ski lesson over her head?”
Frank’s arm paused in midair. The croissant fell back into the basket. “Oh,
wow,” he said, sitting back and exhaling. “I never thought about it that way. Is
that something I do?”
Suddenly, the floodgates of insight burst open, and Frank was on a roll. He
started connecting his behavior to his childhood experiences—how his family had
trouble with money; how it was a frequent source of conflict; how helpless and
frustrated it used to make him feel. “I don’t want to repeat that pattern. I had no
idea I was doing this,” he pleaded. “There’s nothing in the world more important
to me than being a good dad. But if I didn’t know I was acting this way, how am I
going to know when I do it again?” Sophia thought for a moment. “Frank, why
don’t you ask Emma to help you?”
And so he did. It took Frank a few weeks to muster the courage to sit down
with his daughter. But when they finally talked, he was surprised to find out how
good it felt to get things out into the open. Though Frank and Emma’s
relationship didn’t heal overnight, of course, Sophia noticed a palpable difference
in how they were interacting just weeks later. He was doing a much better job of
listening to her and staying calm, and Emma told her that he’d virtually stopped
talking about money. As time went on, Frank would lapse back into his old
behavior perhaps more than was ideal—after all, he was unlearning decades of
ingrained habits—but the difference was that now he was more aware of it when
it happened. As a result, he was able to stay focused and improve a little every
day, which over time created a stronger bond between them.
As Sophia’s story shows, it is often possible to help others to increase their
insight, and it’s never too late to begin. For that reason, when dealing with a
delusional person, it’s not a bad idea to be optimistic and assume that a person is
Nudgable until it’s proven otherwise. But at the same time, we must also be
practical—honestly assessing their level of openness and examining whether the
benefits of such a conversation outweigh the costs, wisely choosing our timing
and our words, and above all, keeping our expectations reasonable. Sometimes, a
single conversation can be a game-changer, as Sophia found with Frank. Other
times, the person might need a few more nudges. (Research has shown that on
average, the more unaware a person is, the more likely they are to require
repeated evidence over time, sometimes from several sources.)
But often, if we keep the tone of the conversation positive and constructive and
show that we come from a place of genuine support, we can help the unaware see
themselves more clearly. When we confront with compassion, we can often
nudge them to make powerful changes that don’t just improve their life and
happiness, but ours as well.
THE LIFELONG QUEST AND THE SPECKLED AX
A man once purchased a hand-forged ax from a blacksmith. Affixed atop its
sturdy wooden handle, as the centuries-old story goes, was an iron head covered
in opaque gray carbon, save for the blade, where the blacksmith had sharpened
off the soot to reveal the smooth silver underneath. The man liked the look of the
blade so much that he asked the blacksmith to sand the entire head to match. The
blacksmith agreed, but only if the man would help him power the sharpening
wheel. As the blacksmith pressed the head of the ax hard against the stone, the
man began to turn the wheel. But the task was far more difficult than he had
imagined, and after just a few minutes, the man stopped. And when he checked
his progress, he didn’t see the bright, smooth silver surface he hoped for—the
carbon had only been sanded away in a few areas, and the ax was a gray-speckled
mess.
The man announced that he’d take the ax home as it was anyway.
“No! Turn on, turn on,” the blacksmith said. “We shall have it bright by and by;
as yet, it is only speckled.”
“Yes,” replied the man, “but I think I like a speckled ax best.”
This story, penned by America’s first unicorn, Ben Franklin, perfectly
illustrates how unexpectedly difficult the twin goals of self-awareness and selfimprovement really are. We might strive for an ax that is shiny, smooth, and
flawless, but feel intimidated by the effort and commitment it takes to get there.
Rather than keep sanding away, we find it far easier to convince ourselves that we
wanted an imperfect ax all along.
While a perfect silver ax—i.e., total insight and absolute truth—is not a
realistic or even productive goal, that doesn’t mean we should throw in the towel
when the going gets tough. Without a doubt, the lifelong pursuit of self-awareness
can be long, difficult, and messy. We will hit obstacles or setbacks and feel
daunted by the work it takes. And just when we think we’ve finally sanded off all
of the proverbial soot, we might discover that we actually still have a way to go.
But the fact that we are never truly “finished” becoming self-aware is also what
makes the journey so exciting. No matter how much insight we’ve achieved, there
is always more to be gained. Few understand this better than our unicorns, who
see self-awareness as a state of being that they consistently prioritize. And for the
rest of us, no matter how self-aware we start out, we can all work to continuously
broaden and deepen our insight throughout the course of our lives.
As we go about that process, we will learn things that surprise us, gratify us,
and challenge us. And with each new insight will come the inevitable question of
“Now what?” At the beginning of this book, I called self-awareness the meta-skill
of the twenty-first century—that is, it’s a necessary but not sufficient condition
for a life well lived. Another way of saying this is that insight is pointless if we
don’t put it to use. Imagine how differently things would have turned out if
George Washington hadn’t curbed his pride, restrained his fiery emotions, and
learned to think before he acted; or if Florence Ozor hadn’t followed her heart
and joined the #BringBackOurGirls movement; or if a young Alan Mulally hadn’t
re-invented his management strategy after his first employee gave him a much-
needed wake-up call. As we’ve seen from these and other examples, the most
successful among us don’t just work to gain self-awareness—they act on it and
reap the rewards.
Undeniably, this can feel easier said than done. Most leaders I know who have
completed the Leader Feedback Process, for example, come away with a long,
overwhelming list of strengths to hone and weaknesses to address. And the longer
the list, the more daunting and paralyzing it can feel. Yet this need not be the
case. Just one thing separates people who successfully act on insight from those
who don’t: the ability to take things one step at a time. When Ben Franklin, for
example, set out to practice his 13 virtues, he initially tried to tackle all of them at
once. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t go so well; it took more energy than he’d
imagined to break bad habits and build better ones in their place. So he changed
his strategy to focus on one virtue at a time.
In one of my all-time favorite movies, What About Bob? Bill Murray’s
character Bob has a codependent relationship with his therapist, Leo Marvin,
played by Richard Dreyfuss. During one of their sessions, Leo tells Bob he’ll be
going on vacation for a month. When Bob begins to panic, Leo gives him a book
he wrote called Baby Steps to read while he’s away. Leo explains, “It means
setting small, reasonable goals for yourself, one day at a time.” In an example of
Murray’s classic comedic brilliance, his character follows this advice literally,
taking hundreds of baby steps out of the office and into the elevator. “I’m in the
elevator!” he gleefully exclaims. “All I have to do is take one little step at a time,
and I can do anything!” A silly example, of course, but research confirms that
both Benjamin Franklin and Leo Marvin were onto something.
Franklin likened this approach to weeding an overgrown garden: if you just
walked up and started pulling weeds willy-nilly, you wouldn’t feel like you were
making much progress. But instead, if you tackled just one bed at a time, you’d
be surprised at how quickly you’ll end up with a better-looking garden. And
although by Franklin’s own admission he never quite arrived at the moral
perfection he set out to achieve (a typical unicorn comment), he was “a better and
happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it.”
The same is true for the rest of us. The truth is that you could spend a lifetime
applying and refining the concepts from this book. But as most people
instinctively know, we also need quick wins to help us create and sustain
momentum. To help you do this, I’ve created a simple exercise to catalyze your
self-awareness journey, no matter where you are on that path. During each day of
the 7-Day Insight Challenge, you’ll focus on one element of self-awareness. And
since the point is to provide you with quick hits of insight, I designed each day’s
challenge to be completed in 15 to 30 minutes. To help you to record and process
your learnings from the Insight Challenge, you can download a workbook at
www.Insight-Book.com. And if you’d like a more scientific baseline of your
current level of self-awareness before you begin, you can find a free 360
assessment at www.Insight-Quiz.com.
Day 1: Select Your Self-Awareness Spheres
On a piece of paper, list the three most important spheres of your life: work,
school, parenting, marriage, friends, community, faith, philanthropy, etc.
1. For each sphere, write a few sentences about what success looks like using
the Miracle Question: If you woke up tomorrow and everything in that area
of life was near-perfect, what would that look like?
2. Then, given your definition of success, rate how satisfied are you are now
on a scale of 1 (completely unsatisfied) to 10 (completely satisfied).
Your biggest opportunities for self-awareness are those where you’re not as
satisfied as you want to be. Circle the one or two spheres that you most want to
improve (these are your target self-awareness spheres). Think about what is
keeping you from achieving your definition of success and what changes you
could make to get there.
Day 2: Study the Seven Pillars
Find a trusted friend, family member, or colleague. Go through the Seven Pillars
of Insight together (chapter 2, this page). For each pillar, describe how you see
yourself (e.g., what are your values?) and then ask the other person to share how
they see you (e.g., what do they think your values are?). (And please, be a good
friend and help your partner examine his or her own pillars!) After your
discussion, reflect on the similarities and differences between your answers about
yourself and your partner’s answers about you. What did you learn from this
exercise, and how will you build on it moving forward?
1. Values: The principles that guide how we govern our lives
2. Passions: What we love to do
3. Aspirations: What we want to experience and achieve
4. Fit: The environment we require to be happy and engaged
5. Patterns: Our consistent ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving across
situations
6. Reactions: The thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that reveal our strengths
and weaknesses
7. Impact: How our actions are generally perceived by others
Day 3: Explore Your Barriers
Think back to chapters 3 and 4 and pick one or two barriers to self-awareness that
you suspect might be at play in your own life (i.e., Knowledge Blindness,
Emotion Blindness, Behavior Blindness, the Cult of Self, the Feel Good Effect,
Selfie Syndrome). For the next 24 hours, try to spot the barrier(s) occurring in
real time, either by questioning your own behavior and assumptions or spotting
them in others. At the end of the day, think about what you learned and how you
can apply the strategies you’ve read to help you shift your thoughts and your
actions.
Extra credit: For the next 24 hours, pay attention to how often you are focused
on yourself versus interested in other people, both online and offline. When
you’re tempted to post your recent vacation photos or regale your dinner party
guests with a story about your latest professional accomplishment, ask yourself,
“What am I hoping to achieve by doing this?”
Day 4: Boost Your Internal Self-Awareness
Choose one of the internal self-awareness tools below to experiment with today.
At the end of the day, spend a few moments reflecting on how it went, what you
learned about yourself, and how you can build on this insight moving forward.
1. What Not Why (this page)
2. Comparing and contrasting (this page)
3. Reframing (this page)
4. Hitting pause (this page)
5. Thought-stopping (this page)
6. Reality checks (this page)
7. Solutions-mining (this page)
Day 5: Boost Your External Self-Awareness
Identify one loving critic within each target self-awareness sphere (chapter 7, this
page). Ask them to share one thing that they value or appreciate about you and
one thing that they think might be holding you back. As you’re hearing the
feedback, practice the 3R Model (chapter 8, this page).
Day 6: Survive the Delusional
Think of the most delusional person you know (ideally, that you’ll see today).
Which category from chapter 10 (Lost Cause, Aware Don’t Care, Nudgable) do
you think the person falls into, and what leads you to this conclusion? Practice
using one tool below to better manage your relationship with this person the next
time you see him or her.
1. Compassion without judgment (this page)
2. Float feet-first (this page)
3. Reframing (this page)
4. What can he/she teach me? (this page)
5. Laugh track (this page)
6. State your needs (this page)
7. Clarify your boundaries (this page)
8. Walk away (this page)
9. Confront with compassion (this page)
Day 7: Take Stock
Review the notes you took over the course of the challenge and answer the
following questions:
1. What do you now know about yourself—and about self-awareness in
general—that you didn’t know a week ago?
2. What one goal can you set for yourself over the next month to help you
continue the momentum you have now?
3. And once you’ve completed the challenge, be sure to join the Insight
Challenge Facebook group. Just visit www.Insight-Challenge.com and you’ll
be automatically re-directed to a dedicated group where you can share your
successes and best practices!
If this book has convinced you of anything, I hope it’s that self-awareness isn’t
just for unicorns. Truly, we are all capable of gaining insight and reaping the
resulting rewards; of recognizing our self-limiting behaviors and making better
choices; of knowing what’s most important to us and acting accordingly; of
understanding our impact so we can improve our most important relationships.
The lifelong journey to understanding who we are and how we’re seen can be a
bumpy one, full of obstacles and roadblocks. It can be difficult, painful, and slow.
It can make us feel imperfect, weak, and vulnerable. But this road is also paved
with the greatest of opportunities. Author C. JoyBell C. articulated this far better
than I ever could when she wrote:
I think that we are like stars. Something happens to burst us open;
but when we burst open and think we are dying; we’re actually
turning into a supernova. And then when we look at ourselves again,
we see that we’re suddenly more beautiful than we ever were before.
Self-awareness transforms us into supernovas—more beautiful, better, and
brighter than we ever were before.
Understanding our values—that is, the principles that guide how we want to live
our lives—is the first pillar of insight. Values help us define the person we want
to be, as well as set the stage for the other six pillars. Here are a few questions to
help you better understand yours:
1. What values were you raised with? Does your current belief system reflect
those values, or do you see the world differently than you were brought up
to see it?
2. What were the most important events or experiences of your childhood and
young adulthood? How did they shape your view of the world?
3. At work and in life, whom do you most respect and what do you respect
about them?
4. Whom do you least respect and what makes you feel this way?
5. Who is the best (and the worst) boss you’ve ever had, and what did she or he
do to earn that moniker?
6. When it comes to raising a family or mentoring others, what behaviors
would you most and least want to instill?
To help you further identify or narrow your most important values, below is a
fairly exhaustive list:
Acceptance
Accuracy
Achievement
Adventure
Attractiveness
Authority
Authority
Autonomy
Beauty
Caring
Challenge
Change
Comfort
Commitment
Compassion
Contribution
Cooperation
Courtesy
Creativity
Dependability
Duty
Ecology
Excitement
Faithfulness
Fame
Family
Fitness
Flexibility
Forgiveness
Friendship
Fun
Generosity
Genuineness
God’s Will
Growth
Health
Helpfulness
Honesty
Hope
Hope
Humility
Humor
Independence
Industry
Inner Peace
Intimacy
Justice
Knowledge
Leisure
Loved
Loving
Mastery
Mindfulness
Moderation
Monogamy
Nonconformity
Nurturance
Openness
Order
Passion
Pleasure
Popularity
Power
Purpose
Rationality
Realism
Responsibility
Risk
Romance
Safety
Self-Acceptance
Self-Control
Self-Control
Self-Esteem
Self-Knowledge
Service
Sexuality
Simplicity
Solitude
Spirituality
Stability
Tolerance
Tradition
Virtue
Wealth
World Peace
*
* W. R. Miller et al. “Personal values card sort.” Albuquerque: University of New Mexico,
2001.
Understanding our passions—the second pillar of insight—is key to making
choices and decisions that line up with what we love to do, both in our careers
and in our personal lives. Here are a few questions to help you get started in
exploring your passions:
1. What kind of day would make you leap out of bed in the morning?
2. What types of projects or activities do you never seem to get sick of?
3. What types of projects or activities do you find least enjoyable?
4. If you retired tomorrow, what would you miss the most about your work?
5. What are your hobbies and what do you like about them?
If you’re looking for more guidance to unlock your passions, there is no
shortage of “What color is your parachute”–like assessments, and I certainly
encourage you to take them. But not all are created equal, so make sure you’re
taking a test that’s been well validated. Two of the best are:
1. The Holland RIASEC Model (you can find a free version at:
http://personality-testing.info/tests/RIASEC/ or http://www.truity.com/test/
holland-code-career-test).
2. The Strong Interest Inventory (you can purchase the test at
http://www.discoveryourpersonality.com/strong-interest-inventory-careertest.html or http://careerassessmentsite.com/tests/strong-tests/about-thestrong-interest-inventory/).
Steve Jobs once said, “I want to make a dent in the universe.” This is the essence
of the third pillar of insight: our aspirations, or what we want to experience and
achieve. Here are a few questions to help you identify your dent:
1. When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up and
what drew you to this profession?
2. Is the way you’re currently spending your time meaningful and gratifying to
you? Is there anything you feel is missing?
3. Imagine that you are an impartial party reading a list of your values and
passions. What might a person like this want to do and experience in his or
her life?
4. What legacy do you want to leave behind?
5. Imagine that you only had one year left on earth. How would you spend that
time?
Understanding where we fit—that is, the type of environment we require to be
happy and engaged—is the fourth pillar of insight. Fit can help guide us in
making major life decisions: what city to live in, what kind of life partner will
fulfill us, what career or company will help us thrive, etc. Here are a few
questions to help you understand your ideal environment:
1. In the past, when have you performed at your best at work, and what were
the characteristics of those settings?
2. span>In school, what type of learning approach or classroom setting
helps/helped you learn the most and the least?
3. Have you ever left a job because the environment wasn’t a good fit for you?
If so, what about it didn’t work for you?
4. If you had to describe your ideal work environment, what would it be?
5. What types of social situations and relationships tend to make you the
happiest?
The sixth pillar of insight is our reactions—that is, our thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors in any given moment. Such reactions, at their core, are often a
reflection of our strengths and weaknesses. Here are a few questions to help you
begin to understand yours.
Your Strengths
1. In the past, what have you picked up easily without a lot of training?
2. What do you seem to do faster or better than other people?
3. What type of work makes you feel most productive?
4. What type of work do you feel the most proud of?
5. What have you accomplished that’s genuinely surprised you?
Your Weaknesses
1. What are your biggest failures and what commonalities exist between them?
2. When have you been most disappointed with your performance?
3. What piece of constructive feedback have you heard from others most
often?
4. What tasks and activities do you dread most?
5. What qualities do your loved ones playfully tease you about?
Remember, when it comes to gaining real-time insight on our momentary
reactions to the world, the trick is to reflect less and notice more—so instead of
pondering these things, you might examine the tool of mindfulness in chapter 6,
which is arguably the most effective approach for actually gaining insight about
our reactions.
As we’ve seen throughout the book, it’s easy to lose sight of the effect that our
behavior has on others—the seventh pillar—yet examining people’s reactions and
responses to us is a critical part of becoming more self-aware. Here are some
initial questions to help you start to reflect on the impact you might be having on
others:
1. In your life and work, who are the people in whom you have a vested
interest (employees, spouse, kids, customers, etc.)? 2. For each of these
people or groups, what is the impression that you would like to create?
3. Think about your behavior in the last week with each person or group. If
you were a neutral party observing that behavior, would you see it as having
the impact you’re aiming for?
4. In the last week, what reactions have you observed from each person or
group? Think back to your interactions and try to recall not just how they
responded to you verbally, but also their facial expressions, body language,
and tone. Do these match up with your intentions? If not, what changes
could you make?
5. If you see an opportunity to change your approach in ways that would help
you to achieve the impact you desire, what could you experiment with
starting tomorrow, and how will you assess your impact?
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is famous for his statement about
“known knowns,” “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns.” When it comes
to self-awareness, the “unknown unknowns” are what can hurt us most. It’s
uncomfortable to consider the possibility that we don’t know ourselves as well as
we think, but it’s absolutely essential.
Read the statements below and circle the ones that apply to you. The more
statements you’ve circled, the more you should be questioning your beliefs about
yourself and getting feedback to calibrate those beliefs.
1. Has your job or career made you feel unhappy or unfulfilled for a
prolonged period of time?
2. span>Have you ever been surprised that you didn’t get a promotion or a job
you applied for?
3. Have you ever failed at a task or project when you were sure that you’d
succeed?
4. Have you ever been surprised by the results of a performance evaluation or
a 360 assessment?
5. Have you ever been blindsided by negative feedback from a boss, peer,
employee, or loved one?
6. Has a work colleague or loved one ever been angry with you without your
knowing why?
7. Have any of your romantic or platonic relationships taken a sudden turn for
the worse for reasons you didn’t completely understand?
8. Have any of your romantic or platonic relationships ended unexpectedly?
What Are Your Assumptions?
One way to avoid the Three Blindspots is to identify your assumptions before you
make critical decisions. Here are a few questions to help you surface your
assumptions in a work context:
1. How will this decision impact the various stakeholder groups within and
outside your company? Are there any stakeholders that you haven’t
considered?
2. What are the best and worst cases if you implement this decision?
3. What consequences for this decision have you failed to consider?
4. How would a smart and savvy competitor view this decision and how might
they respond?
5. What would someone totally unconnected to this decision like and dislike
about it?
6. What developments might change the thinking you’ve used to arrive at this
decision?
7. What sources of information or data might you have overlooked in arriving
at this decision?
For each item below, circle which of the two options (the left or right) best
describes you:
The test you just took is a sampling of items from the Narcissistic Personality
Inventory.
* The more items on the left you circled, the more narcissistic qualities
you may possess. Don’t worry—having a few narcissistic tendencies doesn’t
necessarily mean you are a narcissist. But it might mean you have some work to
do in resisting the Cult of Self.
* Daniel R. Ames, Paul Rose, and Cameron P. Anderson. “The NPI-16 as a short measure of
narcissism.” Journal of Research in Personality 40.4 (2006): 440–450.
Although it’s in increasingly rare supply in our Cult of Self world, humility is a
necessary ingredient of self-awareness. Being humble means having an
appreciation for our weaknesses, keeping our successes in perspective, and
acknowledging the contributions of others.
For each item below, choose the number that best describes your behavior in
general. Try to look at how you’re actually behaving, rather than how you wish to
behave. Because others can often see what we can’t, it may be helpful to have a
trusted advisor weigh in as well. When you’re finished, average your responses
and review the guide on the next page.

As you read in chapter 5, a need for absolute truth is an enemy of insight because
it blinds us to our many complexities, contradictions, and nuances. To find out
whether a need for absolute truth is closing you off to a multifaceted
understanding of yourself, for each item below, choose the number that best
describes your behavior in general. Try to look at how you’re actually behaving,
rather than how you wish to behave. When you’re finished, average your
responses and review the guide on the following page.
*
* Omer Faruk Simsek. “Self-absorption paradox is not a paradox: Illuminating the dark side of
self-reflection.” International Journal of Psychology 48.6 (2013): 1109–1121.
As you read in chapter 5, we all have a Ruminator buried inside of us—a
nefarious character lying in wait to sabotage our attempts at insight by secondguessing our choices, reminding us of our failings, and sending us down an
unproductive spiral of self-criticism and self-doubt. To see how much power the
Ruminator is exerting over you, for each item below, choose the number that best
describes your behavior in general. Try to look at how you’re actually behaving,
rather than how you wish to behave. When you’re finished, average your
responses and review the guide on the next page.
*
* Paul D. Trapnell and Jennifer D. Campbell. “Private self-consciousness and the five-factor
model of personality: Distinguishing rumination from reflection.” Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology 76.2 (1999): 284.
As you read in chapter 5, when faced with a challenging task, seeing it as an
opportunity for learning (a “learn-well” mindset”) rather than performance (a
“do-well” mindset) can stop us from ruminating in the face of failure—and at the
same time help us improve our performance. To see which mindset you gravitate
toward, read the statements below and circle the ones that apply to you. When
making your selections, try to look at how you’re actually behaving, rather than
how you wish to behave.
1. I like it when my colleagues know how well I’m doing on a project.
2. I am willing to select challenging work assignments that will help me
improve my skills.
3. I’d be more likely to choose to work on a project I know I can do well than
experiment with a new project.
4. I often look for ways to improve my knowledge.
5. I tend to avoid situations where I might not perform well.
6. I like to set challenging goals I might not meet versus easy goals I know I
can surpass.
7. When others are trying to solve a problem, I enjoy it when I already know
the answer.
8. I prefer to work in environments with extremely high expectations.
If you found yourself circling more odd-numbered questions, you’re more
likely to have a do-well mindset, and if you circled more even-numbered ones,
you probably have a learn-well one.
As you’ve seen throughout the book, getting honest, objective feedback from
others is the best tool we have for becoming more externally self-aware. To see if
you are using this valuable tool to its fullest advantage, for each item below,
choose the number that best describes your behavior in general. Try to look at
how you’re actually behaving, rather than how you wish to behave. When you’re
finished, average your responses and review the guide below.


If your company doesn’t have institutionalized 360s, it doesn’t mean you can’t
take one. Though many can cost upwards of $500, here are a few “forever free”
options:
1. PersonalityPad.org was developed by Eric Papas and his research team at
the University of Virginia. Their noble goal is to make multi-source
feedback available to everyone. The 10-question assessment is easy to
complete, and the results are high-level but enlightening.
2. SelfStir.com is more comprehensive: it’s longer, includes open-ended
responses, and even spits out a detailed report.
3. BankableLeadership.com is one I created for the launch of my first book,
Bankable Leadership. The 12-item survey will help you learn how you see
yourself, and how others see you, with regard to your “people” and “results”
behaviors.
If you decide to use one or more of these tools, I suggest that you contact the
people you want to rate you in advance. Just explain that you’re doing a 360, that
you’d love to have them anonymously participate, and that they’ll be getting an email with a link to a survey so they can provide their observations of your
behavior. Not only does this ensure the survey e-mail doesn’t get lost in their junk
folder; a personal appeal will help them understand the context and how
important their participation is for your continued growth and development.
First and foremost, thanks to the self-awareness unicorns across the globe who participated in
our study. Each and every one of you is proof that becoming more self-aware is not just
possible, but well worth the time and energy it takes to get there. We’re all a work in progress,
and it’s heartening to know that you’re out there, making yourselves—and the world—better.
To my study collaborators Apryl Broderson, Haley Woznyj, and Eric Heggestad, and my
research assistants Uma Kedharnath, Sean Thomas, Julie Anne Applegate, Lacy Christ, Mike
Jacobson, and Lauren Tronick (unicorn and matchless interviewer). When our team asked the
adorably naive question “How hard could it really be to define and measure self-awareness?” we
had no idea what we were getting into. Three years later, we now know the answer, and your
dedication, wisdom, and can-do spirit made it possible. I’d also like to extend my gratitude to
the friends, family, and clients who opened their networks to help us recruit study participants.
Thank you to the incredible colleagues who make my speaking, writing, and consulting career
possible. To the team at Fletcher & Company: Grainne Fox, Veronica Goldstein, Melissa
Chinchill, Erin McFadden, Sarah Fuentes, and especially my superlative literary agent Christy
Fletcher: thank you for taking a chance on me, for your steady hand, and for your incomparable
support. To Michelle Longmire, my partner in crime at The Eurich Group: every time I think
I’ve fully come to grasp your all-around awesomeness, you do something even more awesome. I
am privileged to work with you every day. To my fabulous speaking management team at
SpeakersOffice: Holli Catchpole, Michele Walace, Cassie Glasgow, and Kim Stark: it’s been
quite a ride, ladies, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds.
I owe an immense debt of gratitude to the outstanding professionals who shepherded this
book at every stage of the process. Lari Bishop, you helped me turn a feeble musing into a fullfledged idea. Michael Palgon, you believed in this book long before I believed in it myself, and
I’m forever grateful for your partnership and friendship. Will Storr, thank you for helping me
tell my stories, for your gift of humor, and for convincing me to nix the bank-robbing clown.
Thank you as well to my reviewers for their invaluable comments on the manuscript: Chuck
Blakeman, Alan Mulally, Michele Walace, Michael Palgon, Chip Heath, and Lynda Spillane.
To the exceptional team at Crown: Talia Krohn, Tina Constable, Campbell Wharton, Ayelet
Gruenspecht, Megan Schuman, Julia Elliott, Tal Goretsky, and Roger Scholl: working with you
on this book has been a dream come true. Your professionalism, dedication, and kindness are
beyond measure. Talia Krohn, my editor extraordinaire, kindred spirit, OCD compatriot, and
true friend: thank you for your unparalleled abilities and problem-solving skills, for cheerfully
responding to my incessant after-hours e-mails, for being my accomplice in the frog-prince
practical joke of 2016, and most important, for being the best partner I could possibly imagine.
To my friends, colleagues, and mentors who provided their wisdom and assistance throughout
the process: Alan Mulally, Marshall Goldsmith, Adam Grant, Ed Catmull, Tommy Spaulding,
Lynda Spillane (love you, gal!), Michelle Gielan, Constantine Sedikides, Herb Blumberg, Ari
Hagler, Cindy Hammel, Dana Sednek, Sarah Daly, Elisa Speranza, Florence Ozor, Eleanor
Allen, Robin Kane, Roger Burleigh, Stephen Ladek, Mike Herron, Dana Graber Ladek, Linda
Henman, Robin Kane, Mike Walker, Teresa Gray, Barry Nelson, Bill Whalen, Doug Griffes,
Ted McMurdo, Scott Page, and most especially Chip Heath (without whom quite literally none
of this would have been possible).
And last but not least, I want to thank the wonderful souls who help me stay grounded and
self-aware—and who love me in spite of my many faults. To Gibson, Coles, Allie, Abs, Marita,
Rogey, Dana, Ray Ray, Jason, Ang, Kristin, Apryl, Marc, G$, Mike, Sue, Rob, Teresa, Kristen,
and Lynda for being my most valued and cherished loving critics. To my friends at Orange
Theory Fitness for providing a safe haven during my frequent bouts of writer’s block (Kaitlyn,
Lindsay, Daniel, Eric, Jason, Jose, and Mia). To my writing companions, Fred and Willow. To
MamaRichie (and all my family) for your unending love and support. Most especially, thank
you to Dave (aka HB) for diagnosing and enduring my ABD (Author Bipolar Disorder), for
forcing me to be self-aware (whether I want to be or not), and for your boundless love,
encouragement, optimism, help, humor, and generosity. ILYVVM.

Chapter 1: The Meta-Skill of the Twenty-First Century
“I heard the bullets whistle”: George Washington. Letter to John A. Washington. May 31,
1754. MS. N.p.
“I shall not fear the attack”: George Washington. Letter to Robert Dinwiddie. June 3, 1754.
MS. N.p.
“advancing when he should”: Ron Chernow. Washington: A Life. Penguin, 2010, p. 49.
“Any ape can reach”: Vilayanur S. Ramachandran. The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s
Quest for What Makes Us Human. W. W. Norton & Company, 2012, p. 4.
Some have even argued: Mark R. Leary and Nicole R. Buttermore. “The evolution of the
human self: Tracing the natural history of self-awareness.” Journal for the Theory of
Social Behaviour 33.4 (2003): 365–404.
it came with a survival: Donna Hart and Robert W. Sussman. Man the Hunted: Primates,
Predators, and Human Evolution. Basic Books, 2005, pp. 159–164.
people who know themselves: This finding comes from our self-awareness research program.
They make smarter decisions: D. Scott Ridley, et al. “Self-regulated learning: The interactive
influence of metacognitive awareness and goal-setting.” Journal of Experimental Education
60.4 (1992): 293–306; Saundra H. Glover, et al. “Re-examining the influence of individual
values on ethical decision making.” From the Universities to the Marketplace: The Business
Ethics Journey. Springer Netherlands, 1997. 109–119.
They have better personal: Stephen L. Franzoi, Mark H. Davis, and Richard D. Young. “The
effects of private self-consciousness and perspective taking on satisfaction in close
relationships.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48.6 (1985): 1584–1594.
and professional relationships: Clive Fletcher and Caroline Bailey. “Assessing selfawareness: Some issues and methods.” Journal of Managerial Psychology 18.5 (2003):
395–404; John J. Sosik and Lara E. Megerian. “Understanding leader emotional
intelligence and performance: The role of self-other agreement on transformational
leadership perceptions.” Group & Organization Management 24.3 (1999): 367–390.
They raise more mature children: Heather K. Warren and Cynthia A. Stifter. “Maternal
emotion-related socialization and preschoolers’ developing emotion self-awareness.” Social
Development 17.2 (2008): 239–258.
They’re smarter: Vladimir D. Shadrikov. “The role of reflection and reflexivity in the
development of students’ abilities.” Psychology in Russia: State of the Art 6.2 (2013).
choose better careers: Chris Brown, Roberta George-Curran, and Marian L. Smith. “The role
of emotional intelligence in the career commitment and decision-making process.” Journal
of Career Assessment 11.4 (2003): 379–392; Romila Singh and Jeffrey H. Greenhaus.
“The relation between career decision-making strategies and person-job fit: A study of job
changers.” Journal of Vocational Behavior 64.1 (2004): 198–221.
more creative: See Paul J. Silvia and Maureen E. O’Brien. “Self-awareness and constructive
functioning: Revisiting ‘the human dilemma.’ ” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology
23.4 (2004): 475, 480–481.
more confident: Anna Sutton, Helen M. Williams, and Christopher W. Allinson. “A
longitudinal, mixed method evaluation of self-awareness training in the workplace.”
European Journal of Training and Development 39.7 (2015): 610–627.
better communicators: Ibid.
less aggressive: Peter Fischer, Tobias Greitemeyer, and Dieter Frey. “Unemployment and
aggression: The moderating role of self-awareness on the effect of unemployment on
aggression.” Aggressive Behavior 34.1 (2008): 34–45.
less likely to lie: See Paul J. Silvia and Maureen E. O’Brien. “Self-awareness and constructive
functioning: Revisiting ‘the human dilemma.’ ” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology
23.4 (2004): 475, 479–480.
better performers at work: Allan H. Church, “Managerial self-awareness in high-performing
individuals in organizations.” Journal of Applied Psychology 82.2 (1997): 281–292.
get more promotions: Bernard M. Bass and Francis J. Yammarino. “Congruence of self and
others’ leadership ratings of naval officers for understanding successful performance.”
Applied Psychology 40.4 (1991): 437–454.
more effective leaders: Bass and Yammarino, “Congruence of self and others’ leadership
ratings”; Malcolm Higgs and Deborah Rowland. “Emperors with clothes on: The role of
self-awareness in developing effective change leadership.” Journal of Change Management
10.4 (2010): 369–385.
more enthusiastic employees: Kenneth N. Wexley, et al. “Attitudinal congruence and
similarity as related to interpersonal evaluations in manager-subordinate dyads.” Academy
of Management Journal 23.2 (1980): 320–330.
lead more profitable: Atuma Okpara, et al. “Self awareness and organizational performance in
the Nigerian banking sector.” European Journal of Research and Reflection in Management
Sciences 3.1 (2015); Harry Schrage. “The R&D entrepreneur: Profile of success.” Harvard
Business Review, November–December, 1965, 56–69; Korn Ferry Institute. “Korn Ferry
Institute study shows link between self-awareness and company financial performance,”
kornferry.com, June 15, 2015, http://www.kornferry.com/press/korn-ferry-institute-studyshows-link-between-self-awareness-and-company-financial-performance/.
600 percent more likely: PDI Ninth House. “Accurate self-insight decreases derailment risk,”
Leadership Research Bulletin, January 24, 2013, http://www.kornferry.com/institute/565-
accurate-self-insight-decreases-derailment-risk.
a staggering $50 million: J. Evelyn Orr, Victoria V. Swisher, King Y. Tang, and Kenneth De
Meuse. “Illuminating blind spots and hidden strengths,” kornferry.com, September 2010,
http://www.kornferry.com/media/lominger_pdf/
Insights_Illuminating_Blind_Spots_and_Hidden_Strengths.pdf.
trouble figuring out: University of Phoenix School of Business. “Nearly three-fourths of US
workers in their 30s want a career change,” University of Phoenix News release, July 29,
2015, http://www.phoenix.edu/news/releases/2015/07/uopx-survey-reveals-three-fourthsus-workers-in-their-thirties-want-career-change.html; http://www.bls.gov/news.release/
pdf/nlsoy.pdf.
“are often flawed”: David Dunning, Chip Heath, and Jerry M. Suls. “Flawed self-assessment
implications for health, education, and the workplace.” Psychological Science in the Public
Interest 5.3 (2004): 69–106.
“more than most, Washington’s biography”: W. W. Abbot, “An Uncommon Awareness of
Self,” Prologue: Quarterly Journal of the National Archives and Records Administration 29
(1989): 7–19; repr. in George Washington Reconsidered, ed. Don Higginbotham
(University Press of Virginia: 2001).
Washington 2.0 reveled: Chernow, p. 603.
“I can bear to hear”: Ibid., p. 603.
“studied every side”: Ibid., p. 521.
“consult[ing] with our means”: Ibid., p. 378.
“While I realize the arduous nature”: Ibid., p. 560.
After surveying thousands: If you’re wondering whether a sample of 50 people is enough to
glean meaningful conclusions about self-awareness, it may be important to point out the
difference between quantitative and qualitative research. Though much of our research
was quantitative—that is, giving people numeric surveys—our examination of our selfawareness unicorns was qualitative in nature. Qualitative research delves deeper into each
participant—in our case, with extensive interviews—in order to look for themes and
patterns. And for a qualitative study, 50 is actually a pretty high number, especially
considering that the unicorns were so difficult to find!
nearly 30 million Nigerians: “INEC Officially Announces Buhari as Winner of Presidential
Race,” pulse.ng, April 1, 2015, http://pulse.ng/politics/nigeria-elections-2015-inecofficially-announces-buhari-as-winner-of-presidential-race-id3619743.html.
Chapter 2: The Anatomy of Self-Awareness
They built massive palaces: History.com staff. “Mayan scientific achievements,” History.com,
2010, http://www.history.com/topics/mayan-scientific-achievements.
Mayans reached an all-time high: Michon Scott. “Mayan mysteries,”
earthobservatory.nasa.gov, August 24, 2004, http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/
Maya/.
by AD 950, 95 percent: Ibid.
combination of massive: Billie L. Turner and Jeremy A. Sabloff. “Classic Period collapse of
the Central Maya Lowlands: Insights about human–environment relationships for
sustainability.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109.35 (2012): 13908–
13914.
survivors moved away: Joseph Stromberg. “Why did the Mayan civilization collapse? A new
study points to deforestation and climate change,” smithsonianmag.com, August 23, 2012,
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-did-the-mayan-civilization-collapsea-new-study-points-to-deforestation-and-climate-change-30863026/?no-ist.
Diamond finally solved: Brian Wu. “Blue hole of Belize may explain what happened to the
Mayans,” sciencetimes.com, December 30, 2014, http://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/
2257/20141230/blue-hole-of-belize-may-explain-what-happened-to-the-mayans.htm.
topic of self-awareness: Greg C. Ashley and Roni Reiter-Palmon. “Self-awareness and the
evolution of leaders: The need for a better measure of self-awareness.” Journal of
Behavioral and Applied Management 14.1 (2012): 2–17.
happiness was achieved: D. Brett King, William Douglas Woody, and Wayne Viney. History
of Psychology: Ideas and Context. Routledge, 2015.
“enquiry into the truth”: Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries. Telling Fairy Tales in the Boardroom:
How to Make Sure Your Organization Lives Happily Ever After. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015,
p. 28.
“the prerequisite for any”: Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, Alei Shur, Volume 1. Bais Hamussar, 1968,
p. 141.
“self-awareness is essential”: Deborah L. Black. “Avicenna on self-awareness and knowing
that one knows,” in S. Rahman et al. (eds.), The Unity of Science in the Arabic Tradition.
Springer, 2008, pp. 63–87, http://individual.utoronto.ca/dlblack/articles/
blackselfknrev.pdf.
“everyone’s looking at me”: Paul J. Silvia and T. Shelley Duval. “Objective self-awareness
theory: Recent progress and enduring problems.” Personality and Social Psychology Review
5.3 (2001): 230–241.
self-awareness being more akin: Allan Fenigstein, Michael F. Scheier, and Arnold H. Buss.
“Public and private self-consciousness: Assessment and theory.” Journal of Consulting and
Clinical Psychology 43.4 (1975): 522–527.
from introspection: Paul D. Trapnell and Jennifer D. Campbell. “Private self-consciousness
and the five-factor model of personality: Distinguishing rumination from reflection.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76.2 (1999): 284–304.
pondering how other people: Arthur I. Wohlers and Manuel London. “Ratings of managerial
characteristics: evaluation difficulty, co-worker agreement, and self-awareness.” Personnel
Psychology 42.2 (1989): 235–261.
difference between how: John T. Kulas and Lisa M. Finkelstein. “Content and reliability of
discrepancy-defined self-awareness in multisource feedback.” Organizational Research
Methods 10.3 (2007): 502–522.
“not a single moral principle”: Benjamin Franklin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
Garden City Publishing Company, 1916, 1179 out of 2559 in eBook.
along with inventing: The Independent Hall Association. “The electric Benjamin Franklin,”
ushistory.org, http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/info/inventions.htm.
“evergreen shoots”: Ben Huh. “I cheated on my life goals and life actually got better,”
medium.com, August 27, 2015, https://medium.com/@benhuh/i-cheated-on-my-lifegoals-and-life-actually-got-better-78121bdf1790#.al1gu1kan.
2,500 personality assessments: Lucy Ash. “Personality tests: Can they indentify the real you?”
BBC News Magazine, July 6, 2012, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18723950.
perspective-taking: Jeffrey A. Joireman, Les Parrott III, and Joy Hammersla. “Empathy and the
self-absorption paradox: Support for the distinction between self-rumination and selfreflection.” Self and Identity 1.1 (2002): 53–65.
“neutral third party”: I’d like to thank Chip Heath for informing me about this study! Eli J.
Finkel, et al. “A brief intervention to promote conflict reappraisal preserves marital quality
over time.” Psychological Science (2013): 1595–1601.
“Zoom In, Zoom Out”: Richard Weissbourd. “The children we mean to raise,”
huffingtonpost.com, July 16, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-weissbourd/
the-children-we-mean-to-raise_b_5589259.html.
“[My friend] kindly informed”: Benjamin Franklin. The Autobiography of Benjamin
Franklin. Garden City Publishing Company, 1916.
early formative experiences: Charles Margerison and A. Kakabadse. “How American chief
executives succeed.” New York: American Management Association (1984).
“challenges values or norms”: Seana Moran. “Purpose: Giftedness in intrapersonal
intelligence.” High Ability Studies 20.2 (2009): 143–159.
Because earthquake events: Morgan W. McCall, Jr., Michael M. Lombardo, and Ann M.
Morrison. Lessons of Experience: How Successful Executives Develop on the Job. Simon and
Schuster, 1988, p. 96.
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Chapter 3: Blindspots
“almost unlimited ability”: Daniel Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Macmillan, 2011, p.
201.
we’re smarter: Linda A. Schoo, et al. “Insight in cognition: Self-awareness of performance
across cognitive domains.” Applied Neuropsychology: Adult 20.2 (2013): 95–102.
funnier: Justin Kruger and David Dunning. “Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in
recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.” Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 77.6 (1999): 1121–1134.
thinner: Pew Research Center. “Americans see weight problems everywhere but in the mirror,”
pewsocialtrends.org, April 11, 2006, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2006/04/11/
americans-see-weight-problems-everywhere-but-in-the-mirror/.
better-looking: Nicholas Epley and Erin Whitchurch. “Mirror, mirror on the wall:
Enhancement in self-recognition.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34.9 (2008):
1159–1170.
more socially skilled: Paul A. Mabe and Stephen G. West. “Validity of self-evaluation of
ability: A review and meta-analysis.” Journal of Applied Psychology 67.3 (1982): 180–196.
more gifted at sports: Richard B. Felson. “Self-and reflected appraisal among football players:
A test of the Meadian hypothesis.” Social Psychology Quarterly (1981): 116–126.
superior students: Paul A. Mabe and Stephen G. West. “Validity of self-evaluation of ability:
A review and meta-analysis.” Journal of Applied Psychology 67.3 (1982): 180–196.
better drivers: Half of drivers believe themselves to be in the top 20 percent of driving ability,
and 92 percent believe they’re safer than the average driver! Ola Svenson. “Are we all less
risky and more skillful than our fellow drivers?” Acta Psychologica 47.2 (1981): 143–148.
almost no relationship: Paul A. Mabe and Stephen G. West. “Validity of self-evaluation of
ability: A review and meta-analysis.” Journal of Applied Psychology 67.3 (1982): 180–196.
nearly 1,000 engineers: Todd R. Zenger. “Why do employers only reward extreme
performance? Examining the relationships among performance, pay, and turnover.”
Administrative Science Quarterly (1992): 198–219.
94 percent of college: K. Patricia Cross. “Not can but will college teaching be improved?” New
Directions for Higher Education, 17, (1977): 1–15.
surgical residents’ self-rated: D. A. Risucci, A. J. Tortolani, and R. J. Ward. “Ratings of
surgical residents by self, supervisors and peers.” Surgery, Gynecology & Obstetrics 169.6
(1989): 519–526.
employees who lack self-awareness: Erich C. Dierdorff and Robert S. Rubin. “Research:
We’re not very self-aware, especially at work,” Harvard Business Review, March 12, 2015,
https://hbr.org/2015/03/research-were-not-very-self-aware-especially-at-work.
those with poor financial: “Study shows link between self-awareness and company financial
performance,” Korn Ferry Institute, June 15, 2015, http://www.kornferry.com/press/kornferry-institute-study-shows-link-between-self-awareness-and-company-financialperformance/.
more likely to derail: PDI Ninth House. “You’re not all that: Self-promoters six times more
likely to derail,” prnewswire.com, April 17, 2012, http://www.prnewswire.com/newsreleases/youre-not-all-that-self-promoters-six-times-more-likely-to-derail-according-topdi-ninth-house-and-university-of-minnesota-study-147742375.html.
underestimate their top performers’: David Dunning. “On identifying human capital: Flawed
knowledge leads to faulty judgments of expertise by individuals and groups.” Advances in
Group Processes. Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2015, pp. 149–176.
Early successes give way: Ulrike Malmendier and Geoffrey Tate. “CEO overconfidence and
corporate investment.” Journal of Finance 60.6 (2005): 2661–2700.
executives more dramatically overvalue: Fabio Sala. “Executive blind spots: Discrepancies
between self-and other-ratings.” Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research 55.4
(2003): 222–229.
experienced leaders: Cheri Ostroff, Leanne E. Atwater, and Barbara J. Feinberg.
“Understanding self-other agreement: A look at rater and ratee characteristics, context,
and outcomes.” Personnel Psychology 57.2 (2004): 333–375.
older managers tend: John W. Fleenor, et al. “Self-other rating agreement in leadership: A
review.” The Leadership Quarterly 21.6 (2010): 1005–1034.
business students, compared: Phillip L. Ackerman, Margaret E. Beier, and Kristy R. Bowen.
“What we really know about our abilities and our knowledge.” Personality and Individual
Differences 33 (2002): 587–605.
aren’t reliable mechanisms: Margaret Diddams and Glenna C. Chang. “Only human:
Exploring the nature of weakness in authentic leadership.” The Leadership Quarterly 23.3
(2012): 593–603.
“walls, mirrors and liars”: Alison Boulton. “Power corrupts but it also plays with your mind:
Lloyd George, Chamberlain, and Thatcher all suffered from ‘hubris syndrome,’ ”
independent.co.uk, September 21, 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/healthand-families/health-news/power-corrupts-but-it-also-plays-with-your-mind-lloyd-georgechamberlain-and-thatcher-all-suffered-8831839.html.
no one lets their packages: Rachel M. Hayes and Scott Schaefer. “CEO pay and the Lake
Wobegon effect.” Journal of Financial Economics 94.2 (2009): 280–290.
emotionally distant personal: Per F. Gjerde, Miyoko Onishi, and Kevin S. Carlson.
“Personality characteristics associated with romantic attachment: A comparison of
interview and self-report methodologies.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 30.11
(2004): 1402–1415.
overestimate the number of words: Gary Wolf. “The data-driven life,” The New York Times
Magazine, April 28, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/magazine/02selfmeasurement-t.html?_r=0.
great financial management: Greenwald & Associates, Inc. Parents, youth, and money:
Executive summary. 2001, https://www.ebri.org/surveys/pym-es.pdf.
Two percent: College Board. Student descriptive questionnaire. Princeton, NJ: Educational
Testing Service. 1976–1977.
whopping 38 out of 40: Mark D. Alicke, et al. “Personal contact, individuation, and the betterthan-average effect.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 68.5 (1995): 804–825.
least competent people: Justin Kruger and David Dunning. “Unskilled and unaware of it: How
difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77.6 (1999): 1121–1134.
skills like driving: E. Kunkel. “On the relationship between estimate of ability and driver
qualification.” Psychologie und Praxis (1971).
academic performance: Beth A. Lindsey and Megan L. Nagel. “Do students know what they
know? Exploring the accuracy of students’ self-assessments.” Physical Review Special
Topics—Physics Education Research 11.2 (2015): 020103; Douglas J. Hacker, et al. “Test
prediction and performance in a classroom context.” Journal of Educational Psychology
92.1 (2000): 160–170.
job performance: Daniel E. Haun, et al. “Assessing the competence of specimen-processing
personnel.” Laboratory Medicine 31.11 (2000): 633–637.
incentivized to be accurate: Joyce Ehrlinger, et al. “Why the unskilled are unaware: Further
explorations of (absent) self-insight among the incompetent.” Organizational Behavior and
Human Decision Processes 105.1 (2008): 98–121.
“blessed with inappropriate confidence”: David Dunning. “We are all confident idiots,”
psmag.com, October 27, 2014, http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/confidentidiots-92793.
series of ingenious studies: Oliver J. Sheldon, David Dunning, and Daniel R. Ames.
“Emotionally unskilled, unaware, and uninterested in learning more: Reactions to feedback
about deficits in emotional intelligence.” Journal of Applied Psychology 99.1 (2014): 125–
137.
Our first awareness: Michael Lewis, et al. “Self development and self-conscious emotions.”
Child Development (1989): 146–156.
despite repeated revelations: Susan Harter. The Construction of the Self: A Developmental
Perspective. Guilford Press, 1999, p. 318.
“What am I like”: Ibid.
predictable progression toward: This finding is from our self-awareness research program.
See also: Andreas Demetriou and Karin Bakracevic. “Reasoning and self-awareness from
adolescence to middle age: Organization and development as a function of education.”
Learning and Individual Differences 19.2 (2009): 181–194.
“they rated themselves”: Constantine Sedikides, et al. “Behind bars but above the bar:
Prisoners consider themselves more prosocial than non-prisoners.” British Journal of
Social Psychology 53.2 (2014): 396–403, p. 400.
“top-down thinking”: David Dunning, et al. “Why people fail to recognize their own
incompetence.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 12.3 (2003): 83–87.
ESPN published the predictions: Ira Stoll. “How the experts struck out on World Series
baseball,” nysun.com, October 28, 2013, http://www.nysun.com/national/how-the-expertsstruck-out-on-world-series/88471/.
experts are wrong: S. Atir, E. Rosenzweig, and D. Dunning. “When knowledge knows no
bounds: self-perceived expertise predicts claims of impossible knowledge.” Psychological
Science 26.8 (2015): 1295–1303.
important role of experience: Berndt Brehmer. “In one word: Not from experience.” Acta
Psychologica 45.1 (1980): 223–241.
brains secretly and simplistically: Daniel Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Macmillan,
2011, p. 99.
To illustrate Emotion Blindness: Norbert Schwarz. “Stimmung als Information:
Untersuchungen zum Einflufs von Stimmungen auf die Bewertung des eigenen Lebens”
[Mood as information: The influence of moods and emotions on evaluative judgments].
Psychologische Rundschau 39 (1987): 148–159.
students were asked two questions: Fritz Strack, Leonard L. Martin, and Norbert Schwarz.
“Priming and communication: Social determinants of information use in judgments of life
satisfaction.” European Journal of Social Psychology 18.5 (1988): 429–442.
participants were given a series: Wilhelm Hofmann, Tobias Gschwendner, and Manfred
Schmitt. “The road to the unconscious self not taken: Discrepancies between self- and
observer-inferences about implicit dispositions from nonverbal behavioural cues.”
European Journal of Personality 23.4 (2009): 343–366.
we typically assume: Chris Argyris. Teaching Smart People How to Learn. Harvard Business
Review Press, 2008.
simple, practical process: Peter F. Drucker. “Managing oneself.” Harvard Business Review
83.1 (2005): 100–109.
overconfident poor performers: Justin Kruger and David Dunning. “Unskilled and unaware of
it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated selfassessments.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77.6 (1999): 1121. See also D.
Ryvkin, M. Krajč, and A. Ortmann. “Are the unskilled doomed to remain unaware?”
Journal of Economic Psychology 33.5 (2012): 1012–1031.
“amusing yet accurate”: Bob Sutton. “Great Piece on Narcissistic CEOs in The New York
Times,” Work Matters blog, March 7, 2012, http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/
2012/03/great-piece-on-narcissistic-ceos-in-the-new-york-times.html.
Great leaders have people: Thanks to my friends Mike Herron and Chuck Blakeman for this
point.
Chapter 4: The Cult of Self
analyzed the names given: Jean M. Twenge, Emodish M. Abebe, and W. Keith Campbell.
“Fitting in or standing out: Trends in American parents’ choices for children’s names,
1880–2007.” Social Psychological and Personality Science 1.1 (2010): 19–25.
“Parents used to give”: Gina Jacobs. “Unique baby names not just a celebrity fad,”
newscenter.sdsu.edu, May 20, 2009, http://newscenter.sdsu.edu/sdsu_newscenter/
news_story.aspx?sid=71319.
Cult of Self is a fairly: Roy F. Baumeister, et al. “Does high self-esteem cause better
performance, interpersonal success, happiness, or healthier lifestyles?” Psychological
Science in the Public Interest 4.1 (2003): 1–44.
The seeds were first sown: Stanley Coopersmith. The Antecedents of Self-Esteem. Consulting
Psychologists Press, 1967.
we didn’t need to become: Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell. The Narcissism Epidemic:
Living in the Age of Entitlement. Simon and Schuster, 2009, p. 62.
“profound consequences for every”: Nathaniel Branden. The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem.
Bantam Dell Publishing Group, 1995, p. 5, as cited in Roy F. Baumeister, Laura Smart,
and Joseph M. Boden. “Relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression: The
dark side of high self-esteem.” Psychological Review 103.1 (1996): 5.
“couldn’t think of a single”: Nathaniel Branden. “In defense of self.” Association for
Humanistic Psychology (1984): 12–13, p. 12, as cited in Roy F. Baumeister, Laura Smart,
and Joseph M. Boden. “Relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression: The
dark side of high self-esteem.” Psychological Review 103.1 (1996): 5–33.
“between self-esteem and teenage”: Andrew M. Mecca, Neil J. Smelser, and John
Vasconcellos. The Social Importance of Self-Esteem. University of California Press, 1989,
p. 105.
“we all know in our gut”: Ibid.
“the man who destroyed”: Will Storr. “The man who destroyed America’s ego,” medium.com,
February 25, 2014, https://medium.com/matter/the-man-who-destroyed-americas-ego94d214257b5#.dasai1u4q.
military cadets’ self-esteem: Martin M. Chemers, Carl B. Watson, and Stephen T. May.
“Dispositional affect and leadership effectiveness: A comparison of self-esteem,
optimism, and efficacy.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 26.3 (2000): 267–277.
College students’ self-esteem: Duane Buhrmester, et al. “Five domains of interpersonal
competence in peer relationships.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 55.6
(1988): 991–1008.
Professionals with high self-esteem: Julia A. Bishop and Heidi M. Inderbitzen. “Peer
acceptance and friendship: An investigation of their relation to self-esteem.” Journal of
Early Adolescence 15.4 (1995): 476–489.
boosting the self-esteem of the unsuccessful: D. R. Forsyth and N. A. Kerr. “Are adaptive
illusions adaptive.” Poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological
Association, Boston, MA (1999), cited in Baumeister et al., 1996.
neither “a major predictor”: Roy F. Baumeister, et al. “Does high self-esteem cause better
performance, interpersonal success, happiness, or healthier lifestyles?” Psychological
Science in the Public Interest 4.1 (2003): 1–44.
“bemoan[ing] the lack”: Ibid.
more violent and aggressive: Baumeister et al. “Relation of threatened egotism to violence and
aggression: The dark side of high self-esteem.” Psychological Review 103.1 (1996): 5–33.
When their romantic: Caryl E. Rusbult, Gregory D. Morrow, and Dennis J. Johnson. “Selfesteem and problem-solving behaviour in close relationships.” British Journal of Social
Psychology 26.4 (1987): 293–303.
more likely to cheat: Thalma E. Lobel and Ilana Levanon. “Self-esteem, need for approval, and
cheating behavior in children.” Journal of Educational Psychology 80.1 (1988): 122–123.
drink, and do drugs: Meg Gerrard, et al. “Self-esteem, self-serving cognitions, and health risk
behavior.” Journal of Personality 68.6 (2000): 1177–1201.
“special and unique.”: Richard Adams. “Headteacher whose praise for pupils went viral falls
foul of Ofsted,” theguardian.com, September 24, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/
education/2015/sep/24/headteacher-whose-praise-for-pupils-went-viral-falls-foul-ofofsted.
“robs the victim”: Zole O’Brien. “Children are never naughty, says head,” express.co.uk, June
28, 2015, http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/587459/Children-teachers-bad-behaviour.
“You know I think you’re wonderful”: Allison Pearson. “Sparing the rod has spoilt these
teachers,” telegraph.co.uk, June 30, 2015, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/
primaryeducation/11707847/Allison-Pearson-Sparing-the-rod-has-spoilt-theseteachers.html.
“you have emptied”: Ibid.
“tried their best during”: “Barrowford school’s KS2 ‘proud’ letter to pupils goes viral,”
bbc.com, July 16, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lancashire-28319907.
a “fantasy”: Jaya Narain. “Inspectors slam primary school where there’s no such thing as a
naughty child and teachers are banned from raising their voices—and give it Ofsted’s
lowest possible rating,” dailymail.co.uk, September 25, 2015, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
news/article-3249078/Inspectors-slam-primary-school-s-no-thing-naughty-child-teachersbanned-raising-voices-Ofsted-s-lowest-possible-rating.html.
“very positive and excited”: Ibid.
hands out roughly 3,500 awards: Ashley Merryman. “Losing is good for you,” nytimes.com,
September 24, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/opinion/losing-is-good-foryou.html?_r=0.
banned all competitive sports: Dilvin Yasa. “Has the self-esteem movement failed our kids,”
childmags.com.au, September 22, 2014, http://www.childmags.com.au/family/
relationships/6766-has-the-self-esteem-movement-failed-our-kids.
they’re too “negative”: William Turvill. “School bans red ink—and tells teachers to mark in
green instead (and get pupils to respond in purple),” dailymail.co.uk, March 19, 2014,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2584672/School-bans-red-ink-tells-teachersmark-green-inst.
“I Love Me” lessons: Richard Lee Colvin. “Losing faith in self-esteem movement,”
latimes.com, January 25, 1999, http://articles.latimes.com/1999/jan/25/news/mn-1505.
with 30 valedictorians: Frank Bruni. “Common core battles the cult of self-esteem,”
dallasnews.com, December 1, 2013, http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/latest-columns/
20131201-common-core-battles-the-cult-of-self-esteem.ece.
grade inflation: Valerie Strauss. “Why grade inflation (even at Harvard) is a big problem,”
washingtonpost.com, December 20, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answersheet/wp/2013/12/20/why-grade-inflation-even-at-harvard-is-a-big-problem/?
utm_term=.6b4ef3d0ee6d.
grades awarded were A’s: Matthew Q. Clarida and Nicholas P. Fandos. “Substantiating fears
of grade inflation, dean says median grade at Harvard College is A-, most common grade
is A,” thecrimson.com, December 4, 2013, http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/
3/grade-inflation-mode-a/.
72 percent of students polled: Kristin Touissant. “Harvard class with A- average not worried
about grade inflation,” boston.com, May 27, 2015, http://www.boston.com/news/localnews/2015/05/27/harvard-class-with-a-average-not-worried-about-grade-inflation.
“a more consistently excellent”: Robert McGuire. “Grade expectations,”
yalealumnimagazine.com, September/October 2013, https://yalealumnimagazine.com/
articles/3735.
college freshmen were overconfident: Richard W. Robins and Jennifer S. Beer. “Positive
illusions about the self: Short-term benefits and long-term costs.” Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology 80.2 (2001): 340–352.
“guileful and deceitful”: C. Randall Colvin, Jack Block, and David C. Funder. “Overly
positive self-evaluations and personality: negative implications for mental health.” Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology 68.6 (1995): 1152, 1156.
“complex, interesting, and intelligent”: C. Randall Colvin, Jack Block, and David C. Funder.
“Overly positive self-evaluations and personality: negative implications for mental health.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 68.6 (1995): 1152–1162.
entrepreneurs and founders tend: Keith M. Hmieleski and Robert A. Baron. “Entrepreneurs’
optimism and new venture performance: A social cognitive perspective.” Academy of
Management Journal 52.3 (2009): 473–488.
“dead certain”: Arnold C. Cooper, Carolyn Y. Woo, and William C. Dunkelberg.
“Entrepreneurs’ perceived chances for success.” Journal of Business Venturing 3.2 (1988):
97–108.
Canadian Innovation Centre: Thomas Åstebro and Samir Elhedhli. “The effectiveness of
simple decision heuristics: Forecasting commercial success for early-stage ventures.”
Management Science 52.3 (2006): 395–409.
“I believe that someone”: Daniel Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Macmillan, 2011, p.
264.
post the most selfies: Laura E. Buffardi and W. Keith Campbell. “Narcissism and social
networking web sites.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34.10 (2008): 1303–
1314.
“moral shallowing hypothesis”: Paul Trapnell and Lisa Sinclair. “Texting frequency and the
moral shallowing hypothesis.” Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for
Personality and Social Psychology, San Diego, CA. 2012.
anyone who takes selfies: Jesse Fox and Margaret C. Rooney. “The Dark Triad and trait selfobjectification as predictors of men’s use and self-presentation behaviors on social
networking sites.” Personality and Individual Differences 76 (2015): 161–165.
narcissism increased, a full 30 percent: Jean M. Twenge, et al. “Egos inflating over time: A
cross-temporal meta-analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory.” Journal of
Personality 76.4 (2008): 875–902.
roughly 80 percent: Cassandra Rutledge Newsom, et al. “Changes in adolescent response
patterns on the MMPI/MMPI-A across four decades.” Journal of Personality Assessment
81.1 (2003): 74–84.
increase in self-focused: William J. Chopik, Deepti H. Joshi, and Sara H. Konrath. “Historical
changes in American self-interest: State of the Union addresses 1790 to 2012.” Personality
and Individual Differences 66 (2014): 128–133.
maintaining our relationships: Sonja Utz. “The function of self-disclosure on social network
sites: Not only intimate, but also positive and entertaining self-disclosures increase the
feeling of connection.” Computers in Human Behavior 45 (2015): 1–10.
11 percent less likely: Sara H. Konrath, Edward H. O’Brien, and Courtney Hsing. “Changes in
dispositional empathy in American college students over time: A meta-analysis.”
Personality and Social Psychology Review 15.2 (2010): 180–198.
narcissists indeed use social media: Eric B. Weiser. “# Me: Narcissism and its facets as
predictors of selfie-posting frequency.” Personality and Individual Differences 86 (2015):
477–481; Soraya Mehdizadeh. “Self-presentation 2.0: Narcissism and self-esteem on
Facebook.” Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 13.4 (2010): 357–364.
spent 35 minutes online: E. Freeman and J. Twenge. “Using MySpace increases the
endorsement of narcissistic personality traits.” Society for Personality and Social
Psychology (2010).
personality disorder characterized: American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5®). American Psychiatric Publishing, 2013.
overrate their performance: John W. Fleenor, et al. “Self–other rating agreement in
leadership: A review.” The Leadership Quarterly 21.6 (2010): 1005–1034.
dominate decision processes: Robert Hogan, Robert Raskin, and Dan Fazzini. “The dark side
of charisma.” Measures of Leadership (1990).
seek excessive recognition: Carolyn C. Morf and Frederick Rhodewalt. “Unraveling the
paradoxes of narcissism: A dynamic self-regulatory processing model.” Psychological
Inquiry 12.4 (2001): 177–196.
show less empathy: Seth A. Rosenthal and Todd L. Pittinsky. “Narcissistic leadership.” The
Leadership Quarterly 17.6 (2006): 617–633.
behave unethically: Michael Maccoby. “Narcissistic leaders: The incredible pros, the
inevitable cons.” Harvard Business Review 78.1 (2000): 68–78.
lowest in effectiveness: Timothy A. Judge, Jeffery A. LePine, and Bruce L. Rich. “Loving
yourself abundantly: Relationship of the narcissistic personality to self- and other
perceptions of workplace deviance, leadership, and task and contextual performance.”
Journal of Applied Psychology 91.4 (2006): 762–776.
less responsive to objective: Arijit Chatterjee and Donald C. Hambrick. “Executive
personality, capability cues, and risk taking: How narcissistic CEOs react to their successes
and stumbles.” Administrative Science Quarterly 56.2 (2011): 202–237.
measured the size of CEO: Charles Ham, et al. “Narcissism is a bad sign: CEO signature size,
investment, and performance.” UNC Kenan-Flagler Research Paper 2013–1 (2014).
overly favorable impression: Shanyang Zhao, Sherri Grasmuck, and Jason Martin. “Identity
construction on Facebook: Digital empowerment in anchored relationships.” Computers in
Human Behavior 24.5 (2008): 1816–1836.
Facebook status updates: Trudy Hui Chua and Leanne Chang. “Follow me and like my
beautiful selfies: Singapore teenage girls’ engagement in self-presentation and peer
comparison on social media.” Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016): 190–197.
dating profiles: Nicole Ellison, Rebecca Heino, and Jennifer Gibbs. “Managing impressions
online: Self-presentation processes in the online dating environment.” Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication 11.2 (2006): 415–441.
Twitter feeds of congresspeople: David S. Lassen and Benjamin J. Toff. “Elite ideology
across media: Constructing a measure of Congressional candidates’ ideological selfpresentation on social media.” Unpublished manuscript (2015).
fewer negative words: Natalya N. Bazarova, et al. “Managing impressions and relationships on
Facebook: Self-presentational and relational concerns revealed through the analysis of
language style.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 32.2 (2012): 121–141.
goal of creating a favorable: L. Bareket-Bojmel, S. Moran, and G. Shahar G. “Strategic selfpresentation on Facebook: Personal motives and audience response to online behavior.
Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016): 788–795.
shutting down her social: Megan McCluskey. “Teen Instagram Star Speaks Out About the
Ugly Truth Behind Social Media Fame.” Time.com, November 2, 2015, http://time.com/
4096988/teen-instagram-star-essena-oneill-quitting-social-media/.
“Let’s be Game Changers”: “Essena O’Neill invites us to ‘Let’s be Game Changers,’ as she
exposes the ‘fakeness’ of social media,” mybodymyimage.com, November 3, 2015,
http://www.mybodymyimage.com/essena-oneill-invites-us-to-lets-be-game-changers-asshe-exposes-the-fakeness-of-social-media.
60 percent of our talking: Robin I. M. Dunbar, Anna Marriott, and Neil D. C. Duncan.
“Human conversational behavior.” Human Nature 8.3 (1997): 231–246.
whopping 80 percent: Mor Naaman, Jeffrey Boase, and Chih-Hui Lai. “Is it really about me?:
message content in social awareness streams.” Proceedings of the 2010 ACM Conference
on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. ACM, 2010.
one of two categories: Ibid.
“a merchant”: Andrew Anthony. “Angela Ahrendts: the woman aiming to make Apple a
luxury brand,” theguardian.com, January 9, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/
technology/2016/jan/10/profile-angela-ahrendts-apple-executive-luxury-brand.
impressive company turnaround: Jennifer Reingold. “What the heck is Angela Ahrendts
doing at Apple?” fortune.com, September 10, 2015, http://fortune.com/2015/09/10/
angela-ahrendts-apple/.
“executives…who are touching”: Tim Hardwick. “Angela Ahrendts says she views Apple
Store staff as ‘executives,’ ” macrumors.com, January 28, 2016,
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/01/28/angela-ahrendts-apple-store-staff-executives/.
“What the heck is Angela”: Jennifer Reingold. “What the heck is Angela Ahrendts doing at
Apple?” fortune.com, September 10, 2015, http://fortune.com/2015/09/10/angelaahrendts-apple/.
2015 marked the company’s: “Apple reports record fourth quarter results,” apple.com,
October 27, 2015, http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/10/27Apple-Reports-RecordFourth-Quarter-Results.html.
skyrocketed to 81 percent: AppleInsider staff. “Angela Ahrendts treats Apple Store employees
like execs, retained 81% of workforce in 2015,” appleinsider.com, January 28, 2016,
http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/28/angela-ahrendts-treats-apple-store-employeeslike-execs-retained-81-of-workforce-in-2015.
teams with humble leaders: Bradley P. Owens, Michael D. Johnson, and Terence R. Mitchell.
“Expressed humility in organizations: Implications for performance, teams, and
leadership.” Organization Science 24.5 (2013): 1517–1538.
humility is actually a necessary: R. A. Emmons. The Psychology of Ultimate Concerns:
Motivation and Spirituality in Personality. Guilford Press, 1999, p. 33, as cited in June
Price Tangney. “Humility: Theoretical perspectives, empirical findings and directions for
future research.” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 19.1 (2000): 70–82.
aren’t dependent on external: Kristin D. Neff and Roos Vonk. “Self-compassion versus global
self-esteem: Two different ways of relating to oneself.” Journal of Personality 77.1
(2009): 23–50.
“really, really want[ed]”: Neff, Kristin D., Kristin L. Kirkpatrick, and Stephanie S. Rude.
“Self-compassion and adaptive psychological functioning.” Journal of Research in
Personality 41.1 (2007): 139–154.
also less creative: Steven G. Rogelberg, et al. “The executive mind: leader self-talk,
effectiveness and strain.” Journal of Managerial Psychology 28.2 (2013): 183–201.
“I am unconscious of intentional”: George Washington. Washington’s Farewell Address
[1796]. First National Bank of Miami.
Chapter 5: Thinking Isn’t Knowing
enjoy stronger relationships: Rick Harrington and Donald A. Loffredo. “Insight, rumination,
and self-reflection as predictors of well-being.” Journal of Psychology 145.1 (2010): 39–
57.
calmer and more content: Anthony M. Grant, John Franklin, and Peter Langford. “The selfreflection and insight scale: A new measure of private self-consciousness.” Social Behavior
and Personality: An International Journal 30.8 (2002): 821–835.
thinking about ourselves: Paul J. Silvia and Ann G. Phillips. “Evaluating self-reflection and
insight as self-conscious traits.” Personality and Individual Differences 50.2 (2011): 234–
237.
the less self-knowledge: Anthony M. Grant, John Franklin, and Peter Langford. “The selfreflection and insight scale: A new measure of private self-consciousness.” Social Behavior
and Personality: An International Journal 30.8 (2002): 821–835, p. 824.
no more self-insight: J. Gregory Hixon and William B. Swann. “When does introspection bear
fruit? Self-reflection, self-insight, and interpersonal choices.” Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology 64.1 (1993): 35–43.
Though chimpanzees: David Premack and Guy Woodruff. “Does the chimpanzee have a
theory of mind?” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1.04 (1978): 515–526.
dolphins: Heidi E. Harley. “Consciousness in dolphins? A review of recent evidence.” Journal
of Comparative Physiology A 199.6 (2013): 565–582.
elephants: Joshua M. Plotnik, Frans B. M. De Waal, and Diana Reiss. “Self-recognition in an
Asian elephant.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103.45 (2006): 17053–
17057.
even pigeons: Robert Epstein, Robert P. Lanza, and Burrhus Frederic Skinner. “Self-awareness
in the pigeon.” Science 212.4495 (1981): 695–696.
engaged in introspection: Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Angela McBride, and Judith Larson.
“Rumination and psychological distress among bereaved partners.” Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology 72.4 (1997): 855–862.
associated with poorer well-being: Julie J. Park and Melissa L. Millora. “The relevance of
reflection: An empirical examination of the role of reflection in ethic of caring,
leadership, and psychological well-being.” Journal of College Student Development 53.2
(2012): 221–242.
have more anxiety: Anthony M. Grant, John Franklin, and Peter Langford. “The self-reflection
and insight scale: A new measure of private self-consciousness.” Social Behavior and
Personality: An International Journal 30.8 (2002): 821–835.
less positive social experiences: John B. Nezlek. “Day-to-day relationships between selfawareness, daily events, and anxiety.” Journal of Personality 70.2 (2002): 249–276.
more negative attitudes: Daniel Stein and Anthony M. Grant. “Disentangling the relationships
among self-reflection, insight, and subjective well-being: The role of dysfunctional
attitudes and core self-evaluations.” Journal of Psychology 148.5 (2014): 505–522.
let’s look at Karen: I’d like to thank the clinical psychologist who shared this example with me,
whose name I’m not mentioning to maintain the confidentiality of his patient.
Timothy Wilson calls “disruptive”: Timothy. D. Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves. Harvard
University Press, 2004.
“belief in this image”: Tarthang Tulku. Skillful Means. Dharma Publishing, 1978, pp. 102–
103.
cleverly represses important: Sigmund Freud. An Outline of Psycho-Analysis. W. W. Norton,
1949.
excavate these sometimes: Timothy D. Wilson and Elizabeth W. Dunn. “Self-knowledge: Its
limits, value, and potential for improvement.” Psychology 55 (2004): 493–518.
“no other notable figure”: Todd Dufresne. “Psychoanalysis is dead…so how does that make
you feel?,” latimes.com, February 18, 2004, http://articles.latimes.com/2004/feb/18/
opinion/oe-dufresne18.
falsifying patient files: Adopf Grünbaum. “Précis of the foundations of psychoanalysis: A
philosophical critique.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 9 (1986): 217–284.
worsened some of his patients’: Daniel Goleman. “As a therapist, Freud fell short, scholars
find,” nytimes.com, March 6, 1990, http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/06/science/as-atherapist-freud-fell-short-scholars-find.html?pagewanted=all.
his life a “catastrophe”: Todd Dufresne. “Psychoanalysis is dead…so how does that make you
feel?,” latimes.com, February 18, 2004, http://articles.latimes.com/2004/feb/18/opinion/
oe-dufresne18.
we can’t uncover them: Timothy D. Wilson. Strangers to Ourselves. Harvard University Press,
2004.
placebo effects may explain: Bruce E. Wampold, et al. “A meta-analysis of outcome studies
comparing bona fide psychotherapies: Empirically, all must have prizes.” Psychological
Bulletin 122.3 (1997): 203–215.
relationship she has with her client: Jennifer A. Lyke. “Insight, but not self-reflection, is
related to subjective well-being.” Personality and Individual Differences 46.1 (2009): 66–
70.
“hinder the search for”: Omer Faruk Simsek. “Self-absorption paradox is not a paradox:
illuminating the dark side of self-reflection.” International Journal of Psychology 48.6
(2013): 1109–1121.
showed male college students: Zoë Chance and Michael I. Norton. “I read Playboy for the
articles.” The Interplay of Truth and Deception: New Agendas in Theory and Research 136
(2009).
hire men over women: Michael I. Norton, Joseph A. Vandello, and John M. Darley. “Casuistry
and social category bias.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87.6 (2004): 817–
831.
conducted a creative study: Donald G. Dutton and Arthur P. Aron. “Some evidence for
heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety.” Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology 30.4 (1974): 510–517.
“so convenient a thing”: To see another excellent example of this phenomenon, check out this
recent and fascinating study: Mitesh Kataria and Tobias Regner. “Honestly, why are you
donating money to charity? An experimental study about self-awareness in status-seeking
behavior.” Theory and Decision 79.3 (2015): 493–515.
most plausible answer: Timothy D. Wilson, et al. “Introspection, attitude change, and attitudebehavior consistency: The disruptive effects of explaining why we feel the way we do.”
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 22 (1989): 287–343.
reasons why your relationship: Timothy D. Wilson, et al. “Effects of analyzing reasons on
attitude-behavior consistency.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 47.1 (1984):
1–5.
self-described basketball experts: Jamin Brett Halberstadt and Gary M. Levine. “Effects of
reasons analysis on the accuracy of predicting basketball games.” Journal of Applied Social
Psychology 29.3 (1999): 517–530.
reduces our satisfaction: Timothy Wilson et al. “Introspecting about reasons can reduce postchoice satisfaction.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 19.3 (1993): 331–39.
negative impact it has: Ethan Kross, Ozlem Ayduk, and Walter Mischel. “When asking ‘why’
does not hurt distinguishing rumination from reflective processing of negative emotions.”
Psychological Science 16.9 (2005): 709–715.
write about why: E. D. Watkins. “Adaptive and maladaptive ruminative self-focus during
emotional processing.” Behaviour Research and Therapy 42.9 (2004): 1037–1052.
“sociability, likeability and interestingness”: J. Gregory Hixon and William B. Swann.
“When does introspection bear fruit? Self-reflection, self-insight, and interpersonal
choices.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64.1 (1993): 35–43.
“rationaliz[ing], justify[ing], and explain[ing]”: Ibid.
five minutes of what: Timothy D. Wilson, et al. “Introspection, attitude change, and attitudebehavior consistency: The disruptive effects of explaining why we feel the way we do.”
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 22 (1989): 287–343.
that “an emotion, which is a passion”: R. H. M. Elwes. The Chief Works of Benedict de
Spinoza, 1887, p. 248.
act of translating our emotions: Matthew D. Lieberman, et al. “Putting feelings into words
affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli.” Psychological
Science 18.5 (2007): 421–428.
don’t understand why: James C. Collins. How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies
Never Give In. Jim Collins, 2009.
Charley Kempthorne has been keeping: Clare Ansberry. “The power of daily writing in a
journal,” wsj.com, January 26, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-power-of-dailywriting-in-a-journal-1453837329.
more self-reflection but less insight: Anthony M. Grant, John Franklin, and Peter Langford.
“The self-reflection and insight scale: A new measure of private self-consciousness.”
Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal 30.8 (2002): 821–835.
“deepest thoughts and feelings”: James W Pennebaker. “Writing about emotional experiences
as a therapeutic process.” Psychological Science 8.3 (1997): 162–166.
distressing in the short term: Brian A. Esterling, et al. “Empirical foundations for writing in
prevention and psychotherapy: Mental and physical health outcomes.” Clinical Psychology
Review 19.1 (1999): 79–96.
longer-term improvements: James W. Pennebaker, Janice K. Kiecolt-Glaser, and Ronald
Glaser. “Disclosure of traumas and immune function: health implications for
psychotherapy.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 56.2 (1988): 239–245.
and well-being: Crystal L. Park and Carol Joyce Blumberg. “Disclosing trauma through
writing: Testing the meaning-making hypothesis.” Cognitive Therapy and Research 26.5
(2002): 597–616.
have better memories: Kitty Klein and Adriel Boals. “Expressive writing can increase working
memory capacity.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 130.3 (2001): 520–533.
higher grade point averages: James W. Pennebaker and Martha E. Francis. “Cognitive,
emotional, and language processes in disclosure.” Cognition & Emotion 10.6 (1996): 601–
626.
less absenteeism from work: Martha E. Francis and James W. Pennebaker. “Putting stress into
words: The impact of writing on physiological, absentee, and self-reported emotional wellbeing measures.” American Journal of Health Promotion 6.4 (1992): 280–287.
quicker re-employment: Stefanie P. Spera, Eric D. Buhrfeind, and James W. Pennebaker.
“Expressive writing and coping with job loss.” Academy of Management Journal 37.3
(1994): 72-–733.
help collegiate tennis players: V. B. Scott, et al. “Emotive writing moderates the relationship
between mood awareness and athletic performance in collegiate tennis players.” North
American Journal of Psychology 5.2 (2003): 311–324.
stronger immune systems: James W. Pennebaker, Janice K. Kiecolt-Glaser, and Ronald
Glaser. “Disclosure of traumas and immune function: health implications for
psychotherapy.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 56.2 (1988): 239–245.
showed less personal growth: Sonja Lyubomirsky, Lorie Sousa, and Rene Dickerhoof. “The
costs and benefits of writing, talking, and thinking about life’s triumphs and defeats.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90.4 (2006): 692–708.
“Happiness is a mystery”: G. K. Chesterton. Heretics. Butler and Tanner, 1905, p. 103.
“who talk about things”: Bridget Murray. “Writing to heal,” apa.org, June 2002,
http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun02/writing.aspx.
writes “short narrative scenes”: Clare Ansberry. “The power of daily writing in a journal,”
wsj.com, January 26, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-power-of-daily-writing-in-ajournal-1453837329.
neither on its own is effective: James W. Pennebaker and Sandra K. Beall. “Confronting a
traumatic event: Toward an understanding of inhibition and disease.” Journal of Abnormal
Psychology 95.3 (1986): 274–281.
True insight only happens: Christopher D. B. Burt. “An analysis of a self-initiated coping
behavior: Diary-keeping.” Child Study Journal 24.3 (1994): 171–189.
when journalers use more causal: James W. Pennebaker. “Writing about emotional
experiences as a therapeutic process.” Psychological Science 8.3 (1997): 162–66; James W.
Pennebaker, Tracy J. Mayne, and Martha E. Francis. “Linguistic predictors of adaptive
bereavement.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 72.4 (1997): 863–871.
writing every few days: James W. Pennebaker. “Writing about emotional experiences as a
therapeutic process.” Psychological Science 8.3 (1997): 162–166.
“I’m not even convinced”: Jordan Gaines Lewis, Ph.D. “Turning Trauma into Story: The
Benefits of Journaling,” psychologytoday.com, August 17, 2012,
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-babble/201208/turning-trauma-story-thebenefits-journaling.
we don’t measure up: T. Pyszczynski and J. Greenberg. “Self-regulatory perseveration and the
depressive self-focusing style: A self-awareness theory of reactive depression.”
Psychological Bulletin 102.1 (1987): 122–138. See also Ann G. Phillips and Paul J. Silvia.
“Self-awareness and the emotional consequences of self-discrepancies.” Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin 31.5 (2005): 703–713.
related to lower grades: V. B. Scott and William D. McIntosh. “The development of a trait
measure of ruminative thought.” Personality and Individual Differences 26.6 (1999):
1045–1056.
impaired problem solving: Sonja Lyubomirsky, et al. “Why ruminators are poor problem
solvers: clues from the phenomenology of dysphoric rumination.” Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology 77.5 (1999): 1041–1060.
worse moods: Nilly Mor and Jennifer Winquist. “Self-focused attention and negative affect: a
meta-analysis.” Psychological Bulletin 128.4 (2002): 638–662.
poorer-quality sleep: Jacob A. Nota and Meredith E. Coles. “Duration and timing of sleep are
associated with repetitive negative thinking.” Cognitive Therapy and Research 39 (2015):
253–261.
stuck in ruminative thought patterns: T. Pyszczynski and J. Greenberg. “Self-regulatory
perseveration and the depressive self-focusing style: A self-awareness theory of reactive
depression.” Psychological Bulletin 102.1 (1987): 122–138.
survey of more than 32,000 people: Peter Kinderman, et al. “Psychological processes mediate
the impact of familial risk, social circumstances and life events on mental health.” PLOS
One 8.10 (2013): e76564.
rumination can often masquerade: J. Paul Hamilton et al. “Depressive rumination, the
default-mode network, and the dark matter of clinical neuroscience.” Biological Psychiatry
78.4 (2015): 224–230.
ruminators are less accurate: Joseph Ciarrochi and Greg Scott. “The link between emotional
competence and well-being: A longitudinal study.” British Journal of Guidance &
Counselling 34.2 (2006): 231–243.
miss the larger picture: Rick Harrington and Donald A. Loffredo. “Insight, rumination, and
self-reflection as predictors of well-being.” Journal of Psychology 145.1 (2010): 39–57.
effectively an avoidance strategy: Steven C. Hayes, et al. “Experiential avoidance and
behavioral disorders: A functional dimensional approach to diagnosis and treatment.”
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 64.6 (1996): 1152.
correlation between rumination: Rick E. Ingram. “Self-focused attention in clinical disorders:
Review and a conceptual model.” Psychological Bulletin 107.2 (1990): 156–176.
ruminators were 70 percent: Jay G. Hull. “A self-awareness model of the causes and effects
of alcohol consumption.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 90.6 (1981): 586–600.
avoid the people and situations: S. Rachman, J. Grüter-Andrew, and R. Shafran. “Post-event
processing in social anxiety.” Behaviour Research and Therapy 38.6 (2000): 611–617.
poor perspective-takers: Jeffrey A. Joireman, Les Parrott III, and Joy Hammersla. “Empathy
and the self-absorption paradox: Support for the distinction between self-rumination and
self-reflection.” Self and Identity 1.1 (2002): 53–65.
help us combat rumination: Carol I. Diener and Carol S. Dweck. “An analysis of learned
helplessness: Continuous changes in performance, strategy, and achievement cognitions
following failure.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36 (1978): 451–462;
Carol I. Diener and Carol S. Dweck. “An analysis of learned helplessness: II. The
processing of success.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39.5 (1980): 940–
952.
learn-well reps had significantly: Don VandeWalle, et al. “The influence of goal orientation
and self-regulation tactics on sales performance: A longitudinal field test.” Journal of
Applied Psychology 84.2 (1999): 249–259.
I call hitting pause: Allison Abbe, Chris Tkach, and Sonja Lyubomirsky. “The art of living by
dispositionally happy people.” Journal of Happiness Studies 4.4 (2003): 385–404.
whatever ruminative thought came into: R. S. Stern, M. S. Lipsedge, and I. M. Marks.
“Obsessive ruminations: A controlled trial of thought-stopping technique.” Behaviour
Research and Therapy 11.4 (1973): 659–662.
Chapter 6: Internal Self-Awareness Tools That Really Work
Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer: Cara Feinberg. “The mindfulness chronicles,”
harvardmagazine.com, September/October 2010, http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/09/
the-mindfulness-chronicles.
“out of the Zen meditation”: Ibid.
“the process of actively noticing”: Ibid.
“The people I know won’t sit still”: Ibid.
“people prefer to be doing”: Timothy D. Wilson, et al. “Just think: The challenges of the
disengaged mind.” Science 345.6192 (2014): 75.
celebrities like Angelina Jolie: Alexia Bure. “Surprising celebrities who meditate,”
wellandgood.com, December 26, 2012, http://www.wellandgood.com/good-advice/
surprising-celebs-who-meditate/slide/9/.
Anderson Cooper: “The newly mindful Anderson Cooper,” cbsnews.com, September 6, 2015,
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-newly-mindful-anderson-cooper/.
Ellen DeGeneres: “What Gisele Bundchen, Ellen DeGeneres & other celebrities say about
meditation,” choosemuse.com, http://www.choosemuse.com/blog/9-top-celebritymeditation-quotes/.
corporations like Google: David Hochman. “Mindfulness: Getting its share of attention,”
nytimes.com, November 3, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/fashion/
mindfulness-and-meditation-are-capturing-attention.html.
McKinsey: David Gelles. “The hidden price of mindfulness inc.,” nytimes.com, March 19,
2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/opinion/sunday/the-hidden-price-ofmindfulness-inc.html?_r=2.
Nike, General Mills, Target, and Aetna: David Hochman. “Mindfulness: Getting its share of
attention,” nytimes.com, November 3, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/
fashion/mindfulness-and-meditation-are-capturing-attention.html?_r=0.
reaching more than 300,000 students: Lauren Cassani Davis. “When mindfulness meets the
classroom,” theatlantic.com, August 31, 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/education/
archive/2015/08/mindfulness-education-schools-meditation/402469/.
U.S. Marines and professional sports: Associated Press. “U.S. Marine Corps members learn
mindfulness meditation and yoga in pilot program to help reduce stress,” January 23,
2013, http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/u-s-marines-learn-meditate-stressreduction-program-article-1.1245698.
one-billion-dollar cottage industry: David Gelles. “The hidden price of mindfulness inc.,”
nytimes.com, March 19, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/opinion/sunday/the-
hidden-price-of-mindfulness-inc.html?_r=2.
38 million Americans admit: CashStar, Inc. “More than 38 million* online Americans
shopped while on the toilet,” prnewswire.com, November 19, 2012,
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/more-than-38-million-online-americansshopped-while-on-the-toilet-179955401.html.
nearly half reported being distracted: Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert. “A
wandering mind is an unhappy mind.” Science 330.6006 (2010): 932.
researchers asked dieters: Todd F. Heatherton, et al. “Self-Awareness, Task Failure, and
Disinhibition: How Attentional Focus Affects Eating.” Journal of Personality 61.1 (1993):
49–61.
who practice it are happier: Kirk Warren Brown and Richard M. Ryan. “The benefits of being
present: mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being.” Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology 84.4 (2003): 822–848.
healthier: Paul Grossman, et al. “Mindfulness-based stress reduction and health benefits: A
meta-analysis.” Journal of Psychosomatic Research 57.1 (2004): 35–43.
more creative: E. J. Langer, D. Heffernan, and M. Kiester. “Reducing burnout in an
institutional setting: An experimental investigation.” Unpublished manuscript, Harvard
University, Cambridge, MA (1988).
more productive: Kwang-Ryang Park. An experimental study of theory-based team building
intervention: A case of Korean work groups.” Unpublished manuscript, Harvard
University, Cambridge, MA (1990).
more authentic: Michael H. Kernis and Brian M. Goldman. “A multicomponent
conceptualization of authenticity: Theory and research.” Advances in Experimental Social
Psychology 38 (2006): 283–357.
more in control of their behavior: Kirk Warren Brown and Richard M. Ryan. “The benefits
of being present: mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being.” Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 84.4 (2003): 822–848.
more satisfied in their marriages: Leslie C. Burpee and Ellen J. Langer. “Mindfulness and
marital satisfaction.” Journal of Adult Development 12.1 (2005): 43–51.
more relaxed: Ellen J. Langer, Irving L. Janis, and John A. Wolfer. “Reduction of
psychological stress in surgical patients.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 11.2
(1975): 155–165.
less aggressive: Whitney L. Heppner, et al. “Mindfulness as a means of reducing aggressive
behavior: Dispositional and situational evidence.” Aggressive Behavior 34.5 (2008): 486–
496.
less burnt-out: E. J. Langer, D. Heffernan, and M. Kiester. “Reducing burnout in an
institutional setting: An experimental investigation.” Unpublished manuscript, Harvard
University, Cambridge, MA (1988).
even thinner: Eric B. Loucks, et al. “Associations of dispositional mindfulness with obesity and
central adiposity: The New England Family Study.” International Journal of Behavioral
Medicine 23.2 (2016): 224–233.
mindfulness meditation can save us: Chen Hemo and Lilac Lev-Ari. “Focus on your
breathing: Does meditation help lower rumination and depressive symptoms?”
International Journal of Psychology and Psychological Therapy 15.3 (2015): 349–359.
intensive mindfulness training retreat: Richard Chambers, Barbara Chuen Yee Lo, and
Nicholas B. Allen. “The impact of intensive mindfulness training on attentional control,
cognitive style, and affect.” Cognitive Therapy and Research 32.3 (2008): 303–322.
enjoy greater self-insight: Kelly C. Richards, C. Estelle Campenni, and Janet L. Muse-Burke.
“Self-care and well-being in mental health professionals: The mediating effects of selfawareness and mindfulness.” Journal of Mental Health Counseling 32.3 (2010): 247–264.
because it increases insight: Yadollah Ghasemipour, Julie Ann Robinson, and Nima Ghorbani.
“Mindfulness and integrative self-knowledge: Relationships with health-related variables.”
International Journal of Psychology 48.6 (2013): 1030–1037.
“Mindfulness offers a strategy”: Personal communication.
better control our behavior: Shannon M. Erisman and Lizabeth Roemer. “A preliminary
investigation of the effects of experimentally induced mindfulness on emotional
responding to film clips.” Emotion 10.1 (2010): 72–82.
They asked students to write: Whitney L. Heppner, et al. “Mindfulness as a means of
reducing aggressive behavior: Dispositional and situational evidence.” Aggressive Behavior
34.5 (2008): 486–496.
only the mindfulness group: J. David Creswell, et al. “Alterations in Resting-State Functional
Connectivity Link Mindfulness Meditation with Reduced Interleukin-6: A Randomized
Controlled Trial.” Biological Psychiatry (2016).
“the essence of mindfulness”: Ellen Langer. “The third metric for success,” ellenlanger.com,
2009, http://www.ellenlanger.com/blog/171/the-third-metric-for-success.
reframing our experiences: I’d like to thank my superstar research assistant Lauren Tronick
for spotting this interesting trend in the data.
“going to the balcony”: William Ury. Getting Past No: Negotiating with Difficult People.
Bantam Books, 1992.
“But how to speak about”: Gustave Flaubert, translated by Lowell Bair. Madame Bovary.
Bantam Books, 1959, p. 35.
rarely take time to reflect: Giada Di Stefano, et al. “Learning by thinking: Overcoming the
bias for action through reflection.” Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper 14-
093 (2015): 14–093.
call-center trainees who took: Ibid.
“biographers of our lives”: Timothy D. Wilson. Strangers to Ourselves. Harvard University
Press, 2004, p. 16.
“Think about your life”: Note: I’ve adapted this slightly to serve the purpose of selfawareness. Dan P. McAdams, et al. “Continuity and change in the life story: A
longitudinal study of autobiographical memories in emerging adulthood.” Journal of
Personality 74.5 (2006): 1371–1400.
life stories are associated: Ibid.
Chase discovered his theme: Jennifer L. Pals. “Authoring a second chance in life: Emotion
and transformational processing within narrative identity.” Research in Human
Development 3.2–3 (2006): 101–120.
achievement…relationships: McAdams and his colleagues call these “agency” and
“communion” respectively.
struggling with their grades: Timothy D. Wilson and Patricia W. Linville. “Improving the
academic performance of college freshmen: Attribution therapy revisited.” Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 42.2 (1982): 367–376.
“I was dead, but the doctors”: Dan P. McAdams. “The redemptive self: Generativity and the
stories Americans live by.” Research in Human Development 3.2–3 (2006): 81–100, p. 90.
even the most horrific experiences: Dan P. McAdams, et al. “When bad things turn good and
good things turn bad: Sequences of redemption and contamination in life narrative and
their relation to psychosocial adaptation in midlife adults and in students.” Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin 27.4 (2001): 474–485.
less introspection and more self-awareness: Anthony M. Grant. “The impact of life coaching
on goal attainment, metacognition and mental health.” Social Behavior and Personality: An
International Journal 31.3 (2003): 253–263.
people sustained this progress: L. S. Green, L. G. Oades, and A. M. Grant. “Cognitivebehavioral, solution-focused life coaching: Enhancing goal striving, well-being, and hope.”
Journal of Positive Psychology 1.3 (2006): 142–149.
solutions-mining is a powerful: Edward R. Watkins, Celine B. Baeyens, and Rebecca Read.
“Concreteness training reduces dysphoria: proof-of-principle for repeated cognitive bias
modification in depression.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 118.1 (2009): 55–64.
Solutions Focused Brief Therapy: Steve De Shazer. Clues: Investigating Solutions in Brief
Therapy. W. W. Norton & Co, 1988. Note that I’ve slightly adapted this question for
brevity.
produced dramatic improvements: Jacqueline Corcoran and Vijayan Pillai. “A review of the
research on solution-focused therapy.” British Journal of Social Work 39.2 (2009): 234–
242.
populations such as parents, prisoners: Wallace J. Gingerich and Sheri Eisengart. “Solutionfocused brief therapy: A review of the outcome research.” Family Process 39.4 (2000):
477–498.
adolescents…struggling with their marriages: Jacqueline Corcoran and Vijayan Pillai. “A
review of the research on solution-focused therapy.” British Journal of Social Work 39.2
(2009): 234–242.
insight and psychological growth: Wei Zhang, et al. “Brief report: Effects of solution-focused
brief therapy group-work on promoting post-traumatic growth of mothers who have a
child with ASD.” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 44.8 (2014): 2052–
2056.
reduce their putting yips: Robert J. Bell, Christopher H. Skinner, and Leslee A. Fisher.
“Decreasing putting yips in accomplished golfers via solution-focused guided imagery: A
single-subject research design.” Journal of Applied Sport Psychology 21.1 (2009): 1–14.
college students were asked to write: Jack J. Bauer and Dan P. McAdams. “Eudaimonic
growth: Narrative growth goals predict increases in ego development and subjective wellbeing 3 years later.” Developmental Psychology 46.4 (2010): 761–772.
Chapter 7: The Truth We Rarely Hear
the words of a drunk: Bruce D. Bartholow, et al. “Alcohol effects on performance monitoring
and adjustment: affect modulation and impairment of evaluative cognitive control.”
Journal of Abnormal Psychology 121.1 (2012): 173–186.
infinitely less accurate: Timothy W. Smith, et al. “Hostile personality traits and coronary
artery calcification in middle-aged and older married couples: Different effects for selfreports versus spouse ratings.” Psychosomatic Medicine 69.5 (2007): 441–448.
only the subordinates could: Bernard M. Bass, and Francis J. Yammarino. “Congruence of
self and others’ leadership ratings of naval officers for understanding successful
performance.” Applied Psychology 40.4 (1991): 437–454.
anticipate our future behavior: Tara K. MacDonald and Michael Ross. “Assessing the
accuracy of predictions about dating relationships: How and why do lovers’ predictions
differ from those made by observers?” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 25.11
(1999): 1417–1429.
match for all but three: David C. Funder, David C. Kolar, and Melinda C. Blackman.
“Agreement among judges of personality: Interpersonal relations, similarity, and
acquaintanceship.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69.4 (1995): 656–672.
different aspects of who we are: Simine Vazire and Erika N. Carlson. “Others sometimes
know us better than we know ourselves.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 20.2
(2011): 104–108. Simine Vazire and Matthias R. Mehl. “Knowing me, knowing you: The
accuracy and unique predictive validity of self-ratings and other-ratings of daily behavior.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95.5 (2008): 1202–1216.
This clever experiment: Sidney Rosen and Abraham Tesser. “On reluctance to communicate
undesirable information: The MUM effect.” Sociometry (1970): 253–263.
“devised to keep people”: Herbert H. Blumberg. “Communication of interpersonal
evaluations.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 23.2 (1972): 157–162.
jeopardize our social standing: Charles F. Bond and Evan L. Anderson. “The reluctance to
transmit bad news: Private discomfort or public display?” Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology 23.2 (1987): 176–187.
social rejection activates: Kipling D. Williams, Christopher K. T. Cheung, and Wilma Choi.
“Cyberostracism: Effects of being ignored over the Internet.” Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology 79.5 (2000): 748–762.
asked them to evaluate: Bella M. DePaulo and Kathy L. Bell. “Truth and investment: Lies are
told to those who care.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71.4 (1996): 703–
716.
more successful and promotable: Bernard M. Bass and Francis J. Yammarino. “Congruence
of self and others’ leadership ratings of naval officers for understanding successful
performance.” Applied Psychology 40.4 (1991): 437–454; Mike Young and Victor
Dulewicz. “Relationships between emotional and congruent self-awareness and
performance in the British Royal Navy.” Journal of Managerial Psychology 22.5 (2007):
465–478.
predictor of leadership success: J. P. Flaum. “When it comes to business leadership, nice guys
finish first,” greenpeakpartners.com, http://greenpeakpartners.com/resources/pdf/
6%208%2010%20Executive%20study%20GP %20commentary%20article_Final.pdf.
less likely you are to be self-aware: Fabio Sala. “Executive Blind Spots: Discrepancies
Between Self-and Other-Ratings.” Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research
55.4 (2003): 222–229.
labeled CEO Disease: John A. Byrne, William C. Symonds, and Julia Flynn Silver. “CEO
disease.” The Training and Development Sourcebook 263 (1994).
future for the automaker: Richard Whittington. What Is Strategy—And Does It Matter?
Cengage Learning EMEA, 2001.
succeeded his father: William Engdahl. “Who is Pehr Gyllenhammar, and what are the AspenSkandia networks?” larouchepub.com, August 31, 1982, http://www.larouchepub.com/
eiw/public/1982/eirv09n33-19820831/eirv09n33-19820831_043-
who_is_pehr_gyllenhammar_and_wha.pdf.
“cheeky” and “provocative”: “Volvo cars and Volvo museum exhibited Pehr G
Gyllenhammar’s cars,” volvo.cars.com, April 15, 2014, http://www.volvocars.com/
international/about/our-company/heritage/heritage-news/volvo-cars-and-volvo-museumexhibited-pehr-g-gyllenhammars-cars.
nickname “The Emperor”: Robert F. Bruner. “An analysis of value destruction and recovery
in the alliance and proposed merger of Volvo and Renault.” Journal of Financial
Economics 51.1 (1999): 125–166.
“an impenetrable mess”: Paula Dwyer. “Why Volvo kissed Renault goodbye,” Business Week,
December 19, 1993, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1993-12-19/why-volvokissed-renault-goodbye.
upped the deal’s projected savings: Ibid.
“We didn’t realize Mr. Gyllenhammar”: Ibid.
“envious vendetta” against him: Robert F. Bruner. “An analysis of value destruction and
recovery in the alliance and proposed merger of Volvo and Renault.” Journal of Financial
Economics 51.1 (1999): 125–166.
regularly solicit feedback: The top performing leaders were the top 10 percent and the bottom
performing leaders were the bottom 10 percent. Joseph Folkman. “Top ranked leaders
know this secret: ask for feedback,” forbes.com, January 8, 2015, http://www.forbes.com/
sites/joefolkman/2015/01/08/top-ranked-leaders-know-this-secret-ask-for-feedback/
#b958b9e608fe.
socially and professionally rewarded: Susan J. Ashford and Anne S. Tsui. “Self-regulation for
managerial effectiveness: The role of active feedback seeking.” Academy of Management
Journal 34.2 (1991): 251–280.
With a rich history: David W. Bracken, et al. Should 360-Degree Feedback Be Used Only for
Developmental Purposes? Center for Creative Leadership, 1997.
anywhere from 30 percent: David W. Bracken, Carol W. Timmreck, and Allan H. Church,
eds. The Handbook of Multisource Feedback. John Wiley & Sons, 2001.
to 90 percent: Mark Robert Edwards and Ann J. Ewen. 360 - Feedback: The Powerful New
Model for Employee Assessment & Performance Improvement. AMACOM, 1996.
higher-quality homework: Jesse Pappas and J. Madison. “Multisource feedback for STEM
students improves academic performance.” Annual Conference Proceedings of American
Society of Engineering Education. 2013.
subordinates fear the repercussions: Arthur Morgan, Kath Cannan, and Joanne Cullinane.
“360 feedback: a critical enquiry.” Personnel Review 34.6 (2005): 663–680.
“[If my 360 tells me] anything critical”: Ibid.
Chapter 8: Receiving, Reflecting on, and Responding to Difficult or
Surprising Feedback
performance of female chess players: Hank Rothgerber and Katie Wolsiefer. “A naturalistic
study of stereotype threat in young female chess players.” Group Processes & Intergroup
Relations 17.1 (2014): 79–90.
dubbed stereotype threat: Claude M. Steele and Joshua Aronson. “Stereotype threat and the
intellectual test performance of African Americans.” Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 69.5 (1995): 797–811.
scored 12 percent lower: Thomas S. Dee. “Stereotype threat and the student-athlete.”
Economic Inquiry 52.1 (2014): 173–182.
women hold only 22 percent: National Science Report, 2000, as cited in Joyce Ehrlinger and
David Dunning. “How chronic self-views influence (and potentially mislead) estimates of
performance.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84.1 (2003): 5.
ability to reason about science: Joyce Ehrlinger and David Dunning. “How chronic self-views
influence (and potentially mislead) estimates of performance.” Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology 84.1 (2003): 5–17.
“psychological immune system”: Daniel T. Gilbert, et al. “Immune neglect: A source of
durability bias in affective forecasting.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75.3
(1998): 617–638.
40-percent reduction: Geoffrey L. Cohen, et al. “Reducing the racial achievement gap: A
social-psychological intervention.” Science 313.5791 (2006): 1307–1310.
it reduces our levels: J. David Creswell, et al. “Does self-affirmation, cognitive processing, or
discovery of meaning explain cancer-related health benefits of expressive writing?”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 33.2 (2007): 238–250, p. 242.
open to difficult feedback: Clayton R. Critcher and David Dunning. “Self-affirmations
provide a broader perspective on self-threat.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
41.1 (2015): 3–18.
help us hear tough truths: Brandon J. Schmeichel and Andy Martens. “Self-affirmation and
mortality salience: Affirming values reduces worldview defense and death-thought
accessibility.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 31.5 (2005): 658–667.
“more open to ideas”: David K. Sherman and Geoffrey L. Cohen. “The psychology of selfdefense: Self-affirmation theory.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2006):
183–242.
less likely to hold delusional: Matthew Vess, et al. “Nostalgia as a resource for the self.” Self
and Identity 11.3 (2012): 273–284.
reminiscing reduces rumination: Sander L. Koole, et al. “The cessation of rumination through
self-affirmation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77.1 (1999): 111–125.
increases well-being: Fred B. Bryant, Colette M. Smart, and Scott P. King. “Using the past to
enhance the present: Boosting happiness through positive reminiscence.” Journal of
Happiness Studies 6.3 (2005): 227–260.
before getting threatening feedback: Clayton R. Critcher, David Dunning, and David A.
Armor. “When self-affirmations reduce defensiveness: Timing is key.” Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin 36.7 (2010): 947–959.
Chapter 9: How Leaders Build Self-Aware Teams and Organizations
lost a whopping 25 percent: Sarah Miller Caldicott. “Why Ford’s Alan Mulally is an
innovation CEO for the record books,” forbes.com, June 25, 2014,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahcaldicott/2014/06/25/why-fords-alan-mulally-is-aninnovation-ceo-for-the-record-books/#c35aeec779bb.
“[Bill] Ford found himself”: B. G. Hoffman. American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to
Save Ford Motor Company. Crown, 2012, p. 3.
“This company means a lot”: Ibid., p. 56.
“We’ll all be here again”: Ibid., p. 106.
“nothing short of bovine scatology: Ibid.
Somebody has to figure out: Ibid., p. 124.
self-aware teams are: Susan M. Carter and Michael A. West. “Reflexivity, effectiveness, and
mental health in BBC-TV production teams.” Small Group Research 29.5 (1998): 583–601;
Michaéla C. Schippers, Deanne N. Den Hartog, and Paul L. Koopman. “Reflexivity in
teams: A measure and correlates.” Applied Psychology 56.2 (2007): 189–211.
likely to stay MUM: Susan J. Ashford and Anne S. Tsui. “Self-regulation for managerial
effectiveness: The role of active feedback seeking.” Academy of Management Journal
34.2 (1991): 251–280.
constellation of behaviors as “authentic leadership”: Remus Ilies, Frederick P. Morgeson,
and Jennifer D. Nahrgang. “Authentic leadership and eudaemonic well-being:
Understanding leader-follower outcomes.” The Leadership Quarterly 16.3 (2005): 373–
394; Fred O. Walumbwa, et al. “Authentic leadership: Development and validation of a
theory-based measure.” Journal of Management 34.1 (2008): 89–126.
more productive than those: Joanne Lyubovnikova, et al. “How authentic leadership
influences team performance: The mediating role of team reflexivity.” Journal of Business
Ethics (2015): 1–12.
children were happier: Heather K. Warren and Cynthia A. Stifter. “Maternal emotion-related
socialization and preschoolers’ developing emotion self-awareness.” Social Development
17.2 (2008): 239–258.
followers tend to imitate: Albert Bandura and Richard H. Walters. “Social learning theory.”
General Learning Press, 1997.
“a super-intensive getting-to-know-you”: Cathy Olofson. “GE brings good managers to life,”
fastcompany.com, September 30, 1998, http://www.fastcompany.com/35516/ge-bringsgood-managers-life.
better, more trusting relationships: Steven V. Manderscheid and Alexandre Ardichvili. “New
leader assimilation: Process and outcomes.” Leadership & Organization Development
Journal 29.8 (2008): 661–677.
science of team self-awareness: Amy C. Edmondson. “Learning from mistakes is easier said
than done: Group and organizational influences on the detection and correction of human
error.” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 32.1 (1996): 5–28.
480 and 960 potential errors: The average hospital patient received between 10 and 20 doses
of medication each day with an average stay of 4.8 days. Amy C. Edmondson. “Learning
from mistakes is easier said than done: Group and organizational influences on the
detection and correction of human error.” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 32.1
(1996): 5–28.
kill hundreds and injure: “Medication error reports,” fda.gov, October 20, 2016,
http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/MedicationErrors/ucm080629.htm.
“The term,” Edmondson explains: Amy Edmondson. “Psychological safety and learning
behavior in work teams.” Administrative Science Quarterly 44.2 (1999): 350–383.
reached a similar conclusion: Charles Duhigg. “What Google learned from its quest to build
the perfect team,” nytimes.com, February 28, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/
magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html?_r=0.
create clear norms: Vanessa Urch Druskat and D. Christopher Kayes. “The antecedents of team
competence: Toward a fine-grained model of self-managing team effectiveness.” Research
on Managing Groups and Teams 2.2 (1999): 201–231.
“leading by being self-aware”: Edwin E. Catmull and Amy Wallace. Creativity, Inc.:
Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. New York:
Random House, 2014. Print, xvi.
“unhindered communication”: Ibid., p. 4.
“The year is 2017”: Ibid., p. 283.
“broke[n] the logjam”: Ibid., p. 292.
“made it safer for people”: Ibid., p. 293.
“collaboration, determination and candor”: Ed Catmull. Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the
Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. Random House, 2014, p. 277.
“radical truth” and “radical transparency”: James Freeman. “The soul of a hedge fund
‘machine,’ ” wsj.com, June 6, 2014, http://www.wsj.com/articles/james-freeman-the-soulof-a-hedge-fund-machine-1402094722.
a fireable offense: Richard Feloni. “Ray Dalio explains why 25% of Bridgewater employees
don’t last more than 18 months at the hedge fund giant,” businessinsider.com, March 23,
2016, http://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-challenges-new-bridgewater-employeesface-2016-3.
“digital baseball card”: Eliza Gray. “Questions to answer in the age of optimized hiring,”
time.com, June 11, 2015, http://time.com/3917703/questions-to-answer-in-the-age-of-
optimized-hiring/.
give one another “dots”: Ibid.
“What we’re trying to do”: Bess Levin. “Bridgwater associates truth probings are about to get
turbo-charged,” dealbreaker.com, July 18, 2011, http://dealbreaker.com/2011/07/
bridgwater-associates-truth-probings-are-about-to-get-turbo-charged/.
more money than any other hedge fund: Nishant Kumar. “Bridgewater’s Dalio trumps Soros
as most profitable hedge fund,” bloomberg.com, January 26, 2016,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-26/bridgewater-s-dalio-trumps-sorosas-most-profitable-hedge-fund.
And indeed, many employees: James Freeman. “The soul of a hedge fund ‘machine,’ ”
wsj.com, June 6, 2014, http://www.wsj.com/articles/james-freeman-the-soul-of-a-hedgefund-machine-1402094722.
“constant drumbeat of criticism”: Michelle Celarier and Lawrence Delevingne. “Ray Dalio’s
radical truth,” March 2, 2011, http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/Article.aspx?
ArticleID=2775995&p=3.
“What you see at Bridgewater”: Michelle Celarier and Lawrence Delevingne. “Ray Dalio’s
radical truth,” March 2, 2011, http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/Article.aspx?
ArticleID=2775995&p=3.
30 percent of new hires: Michelle Celarier and Lawrence Delevingne. “Ray Dalio’s radical
truth,” March 2, 2011, http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/Article/2775995/Channel/
199225/Ray-Dalios-radical-truth.html?ArticleId=2775995&p=4#/.V04K15MrK8U.
trying to conjure a name: Elizabeth Brayer. George Eastman: A Biography. University of
Rochester Press, 2006.
“strong [and] incisive”: Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc. “The story behind Kodak
Trademark.” Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, April 1962, p. 40.
85 percent of cameras: Henry C. Lucas. The Search for Survival: Lessons from Disruptive
Technologies. Praeger, 2012, p. 16.
hurt their film business: Ernest Scheyder and Liana B. Baker. “As Kodak struggles, Eastman
Chemical thrives,” reuters.com, December 24, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/useastman-kodak-idUSTRE7BN06B20111224.
“That’s cute—but don’t tell”: Paul B. Carroll and Chunka Mui. Billion Dollar Lessons: What
You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last Twenty-five Years.
Portfolio, 2008, p. 93.
company filed for Chapter 11: Reuters. “Kodak files for bankruptcy, plans biz overhaul.”
business-standard.com, January 19, 2012, http://www.business-standard.com/article/
international/kodak-files-for-bankruptcy-plans-biz-overhaul-112011900119_1.html.
“Take two of these”: B. G. Hoffman. American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford
Motor Company. Crown, 2012, p. 248.
Chapter 10: Surviving and Thriving in a Delusional World
just one unaware person: Erich C. Dierdorff and Robert S. Rubin. “Research: We’re not very
self-aware, especially at work,” Harvard Business Review, March 12, 2015, https://hbr.org/
2015/03/research-were-not-very-self-aware-especially-at-work.
unaware bosses have a detrimental: Dan F. Moshavi, William Brown, and Nancy G. Dodd.
“Leader self-awareness and its relationship to subordinate attitudes and performance.”
Leadership & Organization Development Journal 24.7 (2003): 407–418.
asked 13,500 employees: Sherri Dalphonse. “Washington’s real-life horrible bosses,”
washingtonian.com, December 4, 2013, https://www.washingtonian.com/2013/12/04/reallife-horrible-bosses/.
“suffer the severe disorientation”: William B. Swann Jr., Peter J. Rentfrow, and Jennifer S.
Guinn. “Self-verification: The search for coherence.” In M. R. Leary and J. J. P. Tangney,
eds. Handbook of Self and Identity. Guilford Press, 2003, p. 376.
appealing to their self-interest: Erika N. Carlson, Simine Vazire, and Thomas F. Oltmanns.
“You probably think this paper’s about you: Narcissists’ perceptions of their personality
and reputation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101.1 (2011): 185–201.
cornerstone of narcissism: John F. Rauthmann. “The Dark Triad and interpersonal perception:
Similarities and differences in the social consequences of narcissism, Machiavellianism,
and psychopathy.” Social Psychological and Personality Science 3.4 (2012): 487–496.
one of the best ways: Sander van der Linden and Seth A. Rosenthal. “Measuring narcissism
with a single question? A replication and extension of the Single-Item Narcissism Scale
(SINS).” Personality and Individual Differences 90 (2016): 238–241.
view them as positive!: Sara Konrath, Brian P. Meier, and Brad J. Bushman. “Development
and validation of the single item narcissism scale (SINS).” PLOS One 9.8 (2014): e103469.
“believe they are superior”: Mary Elizabeth Dallas. “Need to spot a narcissist? Just ask them,”
healthday.com, August 5, 2014, http://consumer.healthday.com/mental-healthinformation-25/psychology-and-mental-health-news-566/need-to-spot-a-narcissist-justask-them-690338.html.
others are just too dim: Erika N. Carlson, Simine Vazire, and Thomas F. Oltmanns. “You
probably think this paper’s about you: Narcissists’ perceptions of their personality and
reputation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101.1 (2011): 185–201.
rated lowest in effectiveness: Timothy A. Judge, Jeffery A. LePine, and Bruce L. Rich.
“Loving yourself abundantly: Relationship of the narcissistic personality to self—and other
perceptions of workplace deviance, leadership, and task and contextual performance.”
Journal of Applied Psychology 91.4 (2006): 762–776.
positive correlation between stress: Delroy L. Paulhus, Peter Graf, and Mark Van Selst.
“Attentional load increases the positivity of self-presentation.” Social Cognition 7.4 (1989):
389–400.
would prepare him to hear: Geoffrey L. Cohen, Joshua Aronson, and Claude M. Steele.
“When beliefs yield to evidence: Reducing biased evaluation by affirming the self.”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 26.9 (2000): 1151–1164.
it is often possible: Leanne Atwater, Paul Roush, and Allison Fischthal. “The influence of
upward feedback on self-and follower ratings of leadership.” Personnel Psychology 48.1
(1995): 35–59.
require repeated evidence: Zoe Chance, et al. “The slow decay and quick revival of selfdeception.” Frontiers in Psychology 6 (2015).
“a better and happier man”: Benjamin Franklin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
Garden City Publishing Company, 1916.
Self-awareness transforms us into supernovas: If you’re reading this endnote, perhaps you’re
a science-minded individual. Yes, technically supernovas are dying stars, but I hope that
you choose to remember the spirit of the quote!
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